{{Short description|British dish made of stewed steak, ox kidney, and suet pastry}} {{for|the similar dish with a pastry shell|Steak and kidney pie}} {{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 English 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.<ref name=ad>Davidson, p. 754</ref> Hannah Glasse (1751) gives a recipe for a suet pudding with beef-steak (or mutton).<ref>Glasse, p. 132</ref> 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.<ref>Acton, p. 369</ref>
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!"<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |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 }}</ref>|}}
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''.<ref name=jg>Grigson, p. 243</ref>{{refn|The work was published in book form in 1861, but had appeared as a part-work over the previous two years.<ref name=jg/>|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.<ref name=jg/>
Beeton suggested that the dish could be "very much enriched" by the addition of mushrooms or oysters.<ref>Beeton, pp. 281–282</ref> In those days, oysters were the cheaper of the two: mushroom cultivation was still in its infancy in Europe and oysters were still commonplace.<ref name=jg/> 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".<ref name=dh/>{{refn|Hartley suggested that if seafood were wanted in a steak-and-kidney mix, cockles would be preferable to oysters.<ref name=dh>Hartley, pp. 87–88</ref>|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,<ref name=jg/> as does Marcus Wareing.<ref>[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</ref> Other cooks of modern times have variously specified lamb or sheep kidney (Marguerite Patten, Nigella Lawson and John Torode),<ref>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</ref> beef kidney (Mary Berry, Delia Smith and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall),<ref>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</ref> veal kidney (Gordon Ramsay),<ref>Ramsay, p. 138</ref> either pork or lamb (Jamie Oliver),<ref>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</ref> and either beef, lamb or veal kidneys (Gary Rhodes).<ref>Rhodes (1994), p. 122 and (1997), p. 118</ref>
==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",<ref name=jg/> 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".<ref name=fc>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</ref> 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.<ref name=fc/>
==Nicknames== According to the ''Oxford Companion to Food'', cockneys call steak and kidney pudding "Kate and Sydney Pud".<ref name=ad/> In the slang of the British Armed Forces and some parts of North West England, the puddings are called "babbies' heads".<ref>Seal and Blake, p. 6</ref>
==Notes, references and sources== ===Notes=== {{Reflist|group=n}} ===References=== {{Reflist}} ===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}}
==See also== {{Commons category}} {{portal|Food}} * List of beef dishes * List of steak dishes * List of steamed foods * Steak and kidney pie * Suet pudding
==External links== * [https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/steakandkidneypuddin_93128 Steak and kidney pudding] recipe at bbc.co.uk
{{Beef}} {{English cuisine}}
Category:English beef dishes Category:British puddings Category:English cuisine Category:Savory puddings Category:Steamed foods Category:Food combinations Category:Kidney dishes