steak and kidney pudding

{{Short description|British dish made of stewed steak, ox kidney, and suet pastry}}

{{Infobox prepared food

| name = Steak and kidney pudding

| image = -2017-08-10 Homemade Steak and Kidney Pudding, Cromer, Norfolk (3).JPG

| image_size =

| caption = A homemade steak and kidney pudding, cut open to show the contents

| alternate_name =

| country = England

| region =

| creator =

| type = Pudding

| served =

| main_ingredient = {{hlist | Suet pastry | steak | kidney}}

| variations =

| calories =

| other =

}}

Steak and kidney pudding is a traditional British main course in which beef steak and beef, veal, pork or lamb kidney are enclosed in suet pastry and slow-steamed on a stovetop.

History and ingredients

Steak puddings (without kidney) were part of British cuisine by the 18th century.Davidson, p. 754 Hannah Glasse (1751) gives a recipe for a suet pudding with beef-steak (or mutton).Glasse, p. 132 Nearly a century later, Eliza Acton (1846) specifies rump steak for her "Small beef-steak pudding" made with suet pastry, but, like her predecessor, does not include kidney.Acton, p. 369

An early mention of steak and kidney pudding appears in Bell's New Weekly Messenger on 11 August 1839:

{{blockindent|Hardbake, brandy-balls, and syllabubs have given way to "baked-tates" and "trotters;" and the olden piemen are set aside for the Blackfriars-bridge howl of "Hot beef-steak and kidney puddings!"{{cite news |author= |title=What is doing in London? |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001319/18390811/007/0001 |newspaper=Bell’s New Weekly Messenger |location=England |date=11 August 1839 |access-date=19 March 2018 |via=British Newspaper Archive |url-access=subscription }}|}}

According to the cookery writer Jane Grigson, the first published recipe to include kidney with the steak in a suet pudding was in 1859 in Mrs Beeton's Household Management.Grigson, p. 243{{refn|The work was published in book form in 1861, but had appeared as a part-work over the previous two years.|group=n}} Beeton had been sent the recipe by a correspondent in Sussex in south-east England, and Grigson speculates that it was until then a regional dish, unfamiliar to cooks in other parts of Britain.

Beeton suggested that the dish could be "very much enriched" by the addition of mushrooms or oysters.Beeton, pp. 281–282 In those days, oysters were the cheaper of the two: mushroom cultivation was still in its infancy in Europe and oysters were still commonplace. In the following century, Dorothy Hartley (1954) recommended the use of black-gilled mushrooms rather than oysters, because the long cooking is "apt to make [oysters] go hard".{{refn|Hartley suggested that if seafood were wanted in a steak-and-kidney mix, cockles would be preferable to oysters.Hartley, pp. 87–88|group=n}}

Neither Beeton nor Hartley specified the type of animal from which the kidneys were to be used in a steak and kidney recipe. Grigson (1974) calls for either veal or beef kidney, as does Marcus Wareing.[https://www.thecaterer.com/news/foodservice/steak-and-kidney-pudding-by-marcus-wareing "Steak and Kidney Pudding by Marcus Wareing"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210512085424/https://thecaterer.com/news/foodservice/steak-and-kidney-pudding-by-marcus-wareing |date=2021-05-12 }}, The Caterer, 11 September 2006 Other cooks of modern times have variously specified lamb or sheep kidney (Marguerite Patten, Nigella Lawson and John Torode),Patten, p. 156; Lawson, Nigella. [https://www.nigella.com/recipes/steak-and-kidney-pudding "Steak and kidney pudding"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211127201334/https://www.nigella.com/recipes/steak-and-kidney-pudding |date=2021-11-27 }}, Nigella Recipes. Retrieved 1 May 2022; and Torode, p. 122 beef kidney (Mary Berry, Delia Smith and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall),Berry, pp. 184−185; Smith, Delia. [https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/european/british/mums-steak-and-kidney-plate-pie "Mum's Steak and Kidney Plate Pie"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220320063852/https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/european/british/mums-steak-and-kidney-plate-pie |date=2022-03-20 }}, DeliaOnline. Retrieved 1 May 2022; and Fearnley-Whittingstall, p. 53 veal kidney (Gordon Ramsay),Ramsay, p. 138 either pork or lamb (Jamie Oliver),Oliver, Jamie. [https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/352054895846143996/ "Steak and kidney pudding"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220502142920/https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/352054895846143996/ |date=2022-05-02 }}, jamieoliver.com. Retrieved 1 May 2022 and either beef, lamb or veal kidneys (Gary Rhodes).Rhodes (1994), p. 122 and (1997), p. 118

Cooking

The traditional method, given in Beeton's recipe, calls for the meat to be put raw into a pastry-lined pudding basin, sealed with a pastry lid, covered with a cloth and steamed in a pan of simmering water for several hours. In Grigson's view, "one gets a better, less sodden crust if the filling is cooked first", and, after Hartley's, all the recipes from recent years mentioned above follow suit. In a 2012 article "How to cook the perfect steak and kidney pudding", Felicity Cloake identified one relatively modern recipe, by Constance Spry, that calls for the meat to go in raw, but found that it "comes out gloopy with flour, and tough as a Victorian boarding school".Cloake, Felicity. [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/mar/01/how-cook-perfect-steak-kidney-pudding "How to cook the perfect steak and kidney pudding"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220331072741/https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/mar/01/how-cook-perfect-steak-kidney-pudding |date=2022-03-31 }}, The Guardian, 1 March 2012 In addition to the steak and kidney, the filling typically contains carrots and onions, and is pre-cooked in one or more of beef stock, red wine and stout.

Nicknames

According to the Oxford Companion to Food, cockneys call steak and kidney pudding "Kate and Sydney Pud". In the slang of the British Armed Forces and some parts of North West England, the puddings are called "babbies' heads".Seal and Blake, p. 6

Notes, references and sources

=Notes=

=References=

=Sources=

{{cite book | last = Acton | first = Eliza | title = Modern Cookery, in All its Branches | date = 1846 | location = London | publisher = Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans | url = https://archive.org/details/moderncookeryin00actogoog/page/368/mode/2up?q | oclc = 969517810 }}
{{cite book | last = Beeton | first = Isabella | title = The Book of Household Management | date = 1861 | location = London | publisher = S.O. Beeton | url = https://archive.org/details/b20392758/page/280/mode/2up | oclc =1045333327 }}
{{cite book | last = Berry | first = Mary | title = Mary Berry's Christmas Collection| date = 2006| location = London | publisher = Headline | isbn = 978-0-7553-1562-8}}
{{cite book | first=Alan|last= Davidson | title=The Oxford Companion to Food | location=Oxford | publisher=Oxford University Press | year=1999 | isbn=0-19-211579-0 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00davi_0 }}
{{cite book | last = Fearnley-Whittingstall | first = Hugh | title = The River Cottage Year | date = 2005 | location = London | publisher = Hodder & Stoughton | isbn = 978-0-340-82822-9}}
{{cite book | last = Glasse | first = Hannah | title = The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy | date = 1751 | location = London | publisher = Hannah Glasse | url = https://archive.org/details/b30502287/page/132/mode/2up | oclc = 1155400954 }}
{{cite book | last = Grigson | first = Jane | title = English Food | date = 1992 | location = London | publisher = Ebury Press | isbn = 978-0-09-177043-3}}
{{cite book | last = Hartley | first = Dorothy | title =Food in England | date = 1999| orig-date=1954| location =London | publisher =Macdonald and Jane's | isbn = 978-1-85605-497-3}}
{{cite book | last = Ramsay | first = Gordon | title = Gordon Ramsay's Great British Pub Food | date = 2009 | location = London | publisher = HarperCollins | isbn = 978-0-00-728982-0 }}
{{cite book | last = Rhodes | first = Gary | title = Rhodes Around Britain | date = 1994 | location = London | publisher = BBC Books | isbn = 978-0-563-36440-5 }}
{{cite book | last = Rhodes | first = Gary | title = Fabulous Food | date = 1997| location = London | publisher = BBC Books | isbn = 978-0-563-38385-7}}
{{cite book | last = Patten | first = Marguerite | title = Learning to Cook with Marguerite Patten | date = 1958 | location = London | publisher = Pan | isbn = 978-0-330-23025-4}}
{{cite book | first1 = Graham | last1 = Seal | first2 = Lloyd | last2 = Blake | title = Century of Silent Service | year = 2013 | publisher = Boolarong Press | isbn = 978-1-922-10989-7 | location = Salisbury, Queensland}}
{{cite book | last =Torode | first =John | title = Beef| date =2008 | location =London | publisher = Quadrille| isbn =978-1-84400-690-8}}