A funky blue-cheese like aroma wafts up from the stove as we pan-fry the kidney. Adorned with only butter and pepper, the thick organ stubbornly refuses to cook through.

We try baking it in the oven. To no avail. The center remains nearly raw.

Why are we frying up a kidney? To get a window into the wide-ranging culinary fare of James Joyce’s famous modernist novel Ulysses.

The action of the book takes place entirely on June 16, 1904. The day has grown into an annual celebration of the author’s life and work, called Bloomsday, named after Leopold Bloom, Ulysses’ Homeric hero.

Earlier this year I read Ulysses for the first time and wanted to take a crack at a Bloomsday celebration of my own: cooking up a kidney.

“Mr Leopold Bloom eats with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowl,” is how James Joyce introduces us to his protagonist. Bloom goes on to pan-fry a kidney in butter, seasoned with pepper. Bloom is said to enjoy the “fine tang of faintly scented urine” in his mutton kidneys.

The modern American diet is largely devoid of kidney, as well as other organ meats, which were quite popular in Western diets throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Their popularity declined through the 20th century, as food production industrialized and muscle cuts like steak rose to prominence.

I’m probably like most present-day American eaters. Bloom’s culinary experiences were lost on me. Which is why I embarked on an adventure to try the organ meat, joined by my friend and fellow Ulysses enthusiast, Lucas Sczygelski, and my partner, Anna Nikolay.

The search for a kidney led us to Meat People Butcher, a specialty shop on Monona Drive owned by Pip Freeman and Jenny Griep. We placed a special order for a cow kidney.

“Why are these guys so set on eating a kidney?” Freeman wondered at the time, as he later tells me, although he also observes that the politics of MAHA and online personalities like the Liver King have led to a surge of interest in offal since he first began butchering 12 years ago.

Freeman cut his teeth at The Meat Hook in New York City. There, he honed his interest in sustainability-minded butchering as a reaction against factory farming. Organ meat was really “tough to sell” when Freeman started out. He would sometimes throw it away, which seems crazy now that he has to occasionally buy extra organs to meet demand.

Meat People is one of the few places where you can still find organ meats locally; the shop sells hearts and tongues at a brisk pace.

We purchased two steaks as a backup.

Freeman had warned us that cow kidneys are especially tough to cook all the way through, which is why many traditional kidney dishes involve discarding the center and slicing off the lobes on the edges to be cooked almost as small chunks of steak.

After our final (and unfaithful to the text) attempt at baking the kidney in the oven, we scrape the edges to salvage what appears edible. Anna opts out.

Lucas describes the taste as being “like a shoebox,” while I liken it to the smell of a county fair.

The novel does offer options for more traditional palates. It ends with a cup of cocoa shared between Bloom and his friend Stephen Dedalus, bringing a very long June 16 to a close. 

How many days it took me to read Ulysses: 110

Biggest Bloomsday celebration:  Dublin, which this year runs June 11-16

Cost of a pound of kidney: $4

Cuts you can get at Meat People:  anything that isn’t part of the digestive tract

Other meals mentioned in Ulysses (non-exhaustive): thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, fried liver slices