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Beef Steak and Kidney Pie
2 beef kidneys, sliced 1 pound round of beef, cubed 3 tablespoons Mazola 2 medium sized onions, sliced 1 medium sized carrot, shredded 5 cups boiling water 1 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/2 tablespoon Karo, Blue Label 3 tablespoons Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch Crust for meat pie Soak the kidneys fifteen minutes in cold salted water, then slice. Pour the Mazola in a frying pan, brown the beef, onions and carrot in it, add the water and seasonings and simmer an hour. Add the kidneys, thicken with the cornstarch dissolved in an equal amount of cold water, transfer to a good-sized baking dish, cover with the crust for Meat Pie and bake from thirty-five to forty minutes in a moderately hot oven, 350 to 375 degrees F.
A branded corn-products booklet recipe for a British pub standard, written when Mazola, Karo and Argo were all sold by the same company. The seasoning is thin by modern taste, and the kidney quantity is generous to the point of dominating the pie.
- Add the kidney last, and barely cook itBeef kidney turns grainy and ammoniac when stewed hard. The instruction to add it after the hour of simmering is the hinge of the recipe: it should go in for the thickening and then finish in the oven under the crust, no longer.
- Two beef kidneys is a lotA whole beef kidney runs 1 to 2 lb, so the recipe as written can carry two to four times the weight of the steak. Many modern versions use far less kidney in proportion to beef; 8 oz of kidney to the pound of round is a reasonable reading.
- Trimming and soakingSplit the kidney and cut out the white core and any fat before soaking. Fifteen minutes in cold salted water is the minimum; milk or a change of water is common practice. The ingredient list says sliced and the method says soak then slice, which is the order to follow.
- MazolaCorn oil, and one of the branded products this recipe exists to sell. Any neutral oil works, though beef dripping gives a better browned crust on the meat.
- Karo, Blue LabelBlue Label was Karo's light grade, roughly today's light corn syrup. Half a tablespoon in five cups of gravy amounts to gloss and a faint roundness at most; leaving it out changes almost nothing.
- Five cups of water is too muchThat volume with only three tablespoons of cornstarch gives a loose, pale gravy that will soak the pastry. Reduce the liquid hard during the simmer, or start with 2 to 3 cups of beef stock rather than water, and thicken to a coating consistency.
- Cornstarch versus flourCornstarch gravy loses body when held hot and can go slightly slick after baking. Dissolve it in cold water as directed and add it off the boil; a flour-based gravy holds better under a crust if you are not tied to the brand.
- Crust and ovenThe book refers you to its own separate crust for meat pie; any shortcrust or puff lid will do. The stated 350 to 375F is what the book calls a moderately hot oven, and the filling should be hot going in so the 35 to 40 minutes is spent browning the pastry rather than reheating the meat.
- Seasoning and yieldA teaspoon of salt and an eighth of a teaspoon of pepper for this much stew is restrained; taste before thickening and consider bay, thyme or a spoonful of Worcestershire. Serves six.
Steak and kidney pie is a Victorian British dish, generally traced to the older steak and kidney pudding, in which the same filling is enclosed in suet pastry and steamed rather than baked; the baked pie became the commoner form later, for reasons often said to include the improvement of domestic ovens. Kidney was cheap offal that added depth to a modest amount of stewing beef, which is why the proportions in old recipes lean so heavily on it. Its appearance here, in an American booklet published by the Corn Products Refining Company, has less to do with British cookery than with the marketing of Mazola, Karo and Argo cornstarch as a matched set: this recipe manages all three, cornstarch standing in for the flour a British cook would have used.