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Beef Steak Pudding, Baked
Make a batter with two eggs, three-quarters of a pint of milk, and half a pound of flour, mix smoothly, and pour a little of it into a pie-dish; season one pound of steak and half a pound of kidney according to taste (they should be cut into small pieces), and lay them on the top of the batter; fill up the dish with the remainder, and bake in a quick oven for about an hour and three-quarters. Probable cost, 2s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
This is a batter pudding rather than a pastry one — closer kin to toad-in-the-hole than to the suet-crusted steak pudding of the same book. The measures are imperial, and the oven instruction needs tempering.
- The hinge: two heats, not oneA "quick oven" is usually glossed as roughly 400-450F, and nearly two hours at that risks scorching the batter before the kidney is tender. One workable approach is to start hot for 20 minutes to set and lift the batter, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder so the meat can finish gently in the batter.
- Imperial measuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, a little under 2 US cups. Half a pound of flour is about 1¾ cups of all-purpose, weighed if possible — 8 oz by weight is the reliable figure.
- Cut the batter thin at the bottom"A little of it" means barely enough to film the dish, perhaps a third of a cup. Too much and the meat sits marooned in a wet layer that never browns.
- The steakVictorian "steak" in a pudding means stewing beef — chuck, skirt or blade — not a grilling cut. Cut it into pieces no larger than half an inch so it cooks through in the time given.
- The kidneyOx or veal kidney, cored and the white membrane and gristle cut away. Soaking the pieces 30 minutes in cold salted water or milk mutes the ammoniacal edge that puts modern palates off; drain and pat dry or the batter goes sodden.
- Dish and depthA pie-dish here is a shallow baking dish; sizes varied, but something around 2-3 pints suits these quantities. A deep dish risks a raw seam of batter in the middle, so keeping the total depth under two inches helps.
- Seasoning"According to taste" was doing a lot of work. Salt and pepper generously, and a little chopped onion or a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce is entirely in period.
- Cost and yield2s. 6d. is the book's own probable-cost estimate for the dish. It feeds four to five as written, with a green vegetable and potatoes.
Cassell's separates two kinds of English steak pudding: the boiled kind, sealed in suet crust and steamed for hours, and this baked batter version, which trades the crust for a flour-and-egg batter poured round the meat. Batter baked under or around meat is a long-established idea - dripping puddings set beneath the roasting spit to catch the fat, of which Yorkshire pudding and toad-in-the-hole are the surviving relatives. Adding kidney to steak is generally understood as economy rather than luxury: offal was cheap and gave body and a savoury depth to the gravy. Costed recipes of this sort were pitched at the late-Victorian household, where a dish sufficient for "four or five persons" at a known price mattered more than elegance.