Steak & Kidney Pie ◆ 1910s / WW1 Era Recipe

★ About this recipe: Here’s a traditional British dish for you: the humble and hearty steak and kidney pie. The use of steak with kidney as a savoury pie filling goes back to the 19th Century and has remained a firm favourite ever since.

This particular steak and kidney pie recipe is now well over a century old having been published in 1914 in A Second Dudley Book of Recipes by Georgina Ward, The Countess of Dudley. Unlike modern recipes, there’s no frying to brown the meat before baking. Rather, following a meticulous filling procedure and covering with pastry, the pie goes straight into the oven for 1 ½ hours until it is ready to serve up, in our case with mash & peas (and a little broccoli). If you’re a fan of very meaty pies, this is one to try.

There’s a footnote at the end of the recipe saying that ‘veal and ham, pigeon, and rabbit pies are made in the same manner’ with sliced hard-boiled eggs added to the mix if desired. Following the success of this one, we’ve made a note to try one of the other fillings at some point!
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★ Ingredients:

For the pie:
• 1 lb. steak, cut into strips (Note: the recipe says to use rump steak but when it comes to meat, we always follow our butcher’s recommendation. Having explained the recipe, ours recommended chuck over rump, so we went for that and were very happy that we did!)
• 150g ox or sheep’s kidney, diced (Note: we found our diced ox kidney in Morrisons. Our butcher was fresh outta ox kidney other than a whole frozen one – and that’d never fit in our freezer!)
• Some small pieces of fat cut off from the steak
• Flour, seasoned with salt and pepper
• Puff or rough puff pastry
• About 300ml of either beef stock or water
• A little milk
• 1 egg yolk

For the puff pastry (1936 recipe):
• ½ lb (227g) plain flour
• ½ lb (227g) butter (cold, in a block)
• About half a lemon
• ½ tsp. salt
• 1 teacupful of water

You’ll use about half of the pastry that you make using this recipe. It’s worth making more than you need – you can always freeze the rest to use later on!

★ Full instructions: https://www.handeddown.co.uk/post/ste...
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★ Book Details: A Second Dudley Book of Recipes (1914)
Collected and Arranged By: Georgina Ward, Countess of Dudley
Publisher: Hutchinson & Co. (Paternoster Row, London, England, U.K.)
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