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Beef Steak Pudding
Line a Criscoed basin with plain pastry. Mix together on a plate 1 tablespoon flour, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper for seasoning. Cut 1 pound lean beef in thin slices, dip them in the seasoning, and place them lightly in the basin; split 1 sheep's kidney, skin and cut in thin slices; dip them also in the seasoning, and put them in basin, and pour over 1 cup of water for gravy. Wet the edges of the paste on basin; roll out a piece of paste large enough to cover the dish; place it on, press down at the edges, and sprinkle a little flour over top. Now dip a pudding cloth in boiling water, tie it tightly over the top, and plunge the pudding in plenty of boiling water; then boil for 3 hours. Remove the cloth, and turn the pudding out on a dish. Liver and bacon mixed, or mutton, makes a good pudding of this kind.
A boiled suet-basin pudding of the English kind, rewritten here for an American shortening. The technique is unfamiliar now but forgiving, provided the pot never goes off the boil.
- The hinge: keep the water boilingThe pudding cooks by steam and immersion, and the crust sets in the first half hour. If the pot drops to a simmer or the level falls below the rim of the basin, the pastry turns sodden. Top up with boiling water from a kettle, never cold.
- "Criscoed basin"Crisco appears throughout this book because it was written to promote it; any solid shortening, butter or lard greases the basin just as well. A basin here is a British-style pudding bowl, roughly 1 to 1.5 quarts, deep and steep-sided. A Pyrex bowl of that size works.
- Plain pastry"Plain pastry" in this book is a shortening-and-flour crust. The traditional English version of this pudding uses suet crust, which stays tender through three hours of boiling; a plain short crust is more fragile, so roll it thicker than you would for a pie, about a quarter inch, and patch any tears before covering.
- Sheep's kidneySold now as lamb kidney, usually two or three to a package at a butcher or halal market. One kidney to a pound of beef is a light hand; split it, snip out the white core with scissors, and soak briefly in cold water if the smell is strong.
- The pudding clothHere the cloth is dipped in boiling water and tied tightly over the rim, with a little flour sprinkled on the pastry beneath it; a scalded cloth was the standard seal for boiled puddings. A double layer of parchment and foil, pleated across the middle to allow the crust to rise and tied under the rim with string, does the same job and is easier to lift out.
- Boiled, not steamedThis recipe plunges the basin into water rather than standing it above it, so the basin must be sealed well or water gets in. Set the basin on a folded cloth or a trivet in the pot so it does not rattle against the bottom.
- Turning it outLet the pudding stand five minutes off the heat before inverting; the crust firms slightly and is less likely to collapse. Slit the top before serving to let steam escape.
- YieldA pound of beef in a quart basin serves four, with something green and plain alongside. The single cup of water reduces to very little gravy, so extra gravy can be made separately.
Steak and kidney pudding is the boiled sibling of steak and kidney pie, and is generally traced to English kitchens of the nineteenth century, where a basin lined with suet crust and lowered into a copper of boiling water made a filling meal from tough cuts and cheap offal. Its arrival in an American book of 1915 is less about English nostalgia than about shortening: A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to show that Crisco could stand in for lard, suet and butter across the whole range of household cooking, and a suet pudding made without suet was exactly the sort of demonstration the book existed to give. The variations at the end -- liver and bacon, or mutton -- are the older logic of the dish showing through: the crust and the long boil are the recipe, and whatever is cheap that week goes inside.