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Beef Steak and Kidney Pie
2 pounds lean steak, 4 sheep's kidneys, some melted Crisco, salt and pepper to taste, 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce, and some pie crust. Cut steak very thinly and dip it in melted Crisco, then in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Roll up pieces of steak and lay them in fireproof baking dish. Skin kidneys, cut them in thin slices, leaving out fat in middle kidney; dip them also in seasonings and lay them on top of meat. Sprinkle in Worcestershire sauce and fill up dish with water. Roll pastry rather larger than size required for dish. Wet edge of dish and put narrow band of paste round; wet band, place on it remainder of paste, which cut to size of dish, then pinch edges, and brush over with beaten egg. Make large hole in top and into this put ends some leaf-shaped pieces of paste, with an ornament in center; brush leaves over with egg and bake in hot oven 1 1/2 hours.
A classic British pie transplanted into an American shortening cookbook. The method is sound, but two things need attention before you start: the oven and the kidneys.
- The oven, stagedA "hot oven" in this period is usually reckoned at about 400-450F. That is right for setting the pastry but may scorch it before the filling is done, so you may prefer to start hot for the first 20 minutes, then drop to 325-350F for the remaining hour or so.
- CriscoThe book is a Crisco promotional cookbook, which is why shortening appears where an English cook would have used beef dripping or butter. Any neutral solid fat works for dipping the meat; the melted fat plus seasoned flour is simply a way of getting a coating to thicken the gravy.
- Sheep's kidneysFour lamb kidneys come to roughly 8 to 10 ounces; a veal kidney or a piece of beef kidney of about the same weight can be used instead. Beef kidney is stronger and benefits from a 30-minute soak in cold salted water or milk, then a rinse. Remove the white core from each kidney -- this is what the recipe means by leaving out the fat in the middle.
- The steak"Lean steak" here means stewing beef, not a grilling cut. Chuck, skirt or shin sliced thin and rolled will be tender after 90 minutes of moist heat; sirloin or rump will not improve for the wait.
- Fill up dish with waterAdd liquid to come roughly two-thirds up the meat, not to the brim, or it will boil into the pastry. Beef stock in place of water gives a far better gravy, and the seasoned flour on the meat will thicken it as it bakes.
- The hole in the topThat large central hole works as a steam vent. The recipe sets the ends of the pastry leaves into it with an ornament in the centre, so arrange them without sealing the vent shut.
- PastryThe recipe gives no pastry quantity or dish size; a short crust of roughly 12 ounces flour to 6 ounces fat will cover a large pie dish with enough left for the band and the leaves. The band of paste around the wetted rim is what anchors the lid.
- YieldTwo pounds of steak plus kidney serves four to six. Rest the pie 10 minutes before cutting so the gravy settles.
Steak and kidney pie is a Victorian British dish, generally traced to the older tradition of "beefsteak pudding" boiled in a suet crust, with the pastry-topped baked version becoming common in the second half of the nineteenth century. Kidney was cheap and full of flavour, and a handful of it stretched a modest quantity of stewing beef into a substantial pie. Its appearance in an American cookbook of this sort, with Crisco standing in for dripping, shows how thoroughly the new hydrogenated vegetable shortenings were being marketed, following Crisco's introduction in 1911, as a drop-in replacement for animal fat in every kind of cooking, English imports included. The elaborate pastry leaves and central ornament belong to the same period's taste for decorated raised and covered pies, where the crust was expected to be looked at as well as eaten.