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Kidney and Liver Pudding
A good pudding may be made with equal weights of ox kidney and liver, as follows. Take three-quarters of a pound of each. Cut them into slices, and season with salt and cayenne. Fry these with two ounces of bacon, cut small, and two ounces of dripping. When lightly browned, pour over them by degrees three-quarters of a pint of water, or stock, mixed with a table-spoonful of flour. Line a pudding-basin with a good crust, put in the meat and gravy when nearly boiling, place the lid over, pinch the edges securely, tie the basin in a floured cloth, plunge it into boiling water, and boil quickly until the pudding is done enough. Serve as hot as possible. Boil two hours and a half. Cost, about 2s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A boiled suet-crust pudding of the old English kind, with offal standing in for the more expensive steak. The recipe assumes you already know how to make and line with "a good crust" — that is the one piece it leaves out.
- The crustAlmost certainly suet crust rather than pastry, though the recipe does not say so: roughly 8 oz plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 4 oz shredded beef suet and enough cold water to make a soft dough. Roll out, cut a quarter away for the lid, and line a greased basin of at least 2 pints with the rest.
- MeasuresThree-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz in imperial, so about 1¾ cups (425 ml). Three-quarters of a pound of each meat is about 340 g.
- Ox kidneyTrim out the white core and fatty membrane entirely — left in, it gives the gravy an ammoniacal edge. Some cooks soak the sliced kidney in cold salted water or milk for half an hour and pat it dry before frying.
- The liverOx liver is much stronger and coarser than the calf's or lamb's liver most butchers now sell, and it will be grainy after two and a half hours. Lamb's liver, cut thick, holds up better. Whichever you use, brown the slices only and do not cook them through in the pan.
- DrippingTwo ounces of beef dripping is about 4 tablespoons; lard or a neutral oil will do the browning, though dripping carries the flavour the recipe expects.
- Boiling the basinCover the basin with a pleated floured cloth or foil tied firmly under the rim, and stand it on a trivet or folded cloth in the pan so it does not rattle on the base. Water should come two-thirds up the basin, and it must be topped up with boiling water as it falls — if the pan runs dry the crust scorches and the pudding collapses.
- "Boil quickly"A steady rolling boil for two and a half hours. Modern practice often steams such puddings instead, which is gentler on the crust but takes rather longer.
- ServingFour to five, as the original says. Turn it out onto a hot dish or serve straight from the basin with a napkin round it, and have extra hot gravy ready — some of the filling liquid is taken up by the crust.
Boiled suet puddings filled with meat were among the cheapest hot dinners a Victorian household could put on the table: the crust stretched a small quantity of meat, and the whole thing cooked over a single pot on the range without needing oven heat, which is often said to have mattered in kitchens where the oven was lit only on baking days. Ox kidney was the standard partner to beef in steak and kidney pudding; pairing it with liver instead of steak drops the price further while keeping the rich, dark gravy that the crust is there to soak up.