Steak and kidney pudding

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Steak and kidney pudding is a traditional English dish. It features beef steak and kidney (from beef, veal, pork, or lamb) wrapped in suet pastry and slowly steamed on the stovetop.

The dish appears in British cooking from the 18th century, though puddings of steak without kidney were common earlier. Writers like Hannah Glasse (1751) and Eliza Acton (1846) described suet puddings with beef or rump steak, but usually without kidney.

The first published recipe to include kidney with steak in a suet pudding is thought to be in Mrs Beeton’s Household Management (1859). Beeton even suggested enriching the dish with mushrooms or oysters. In the 20th century, Dorothy Hartley preferred black-gilled mushrooms over oysters because of the long cooking time.

Copying era differences, some cooks specify which kidneys to use (veal or beef), while others allow lamb, sheep, pork, or a mix. Modern cooks often use pre-cooked filling rather than putting raw meat straight into the pastry, which helps avoid a soggy crust.

Traditional method: raw meat goes into a pastry-lined pudding basin, topped with a pastry lid, and the whole thing is steamed for several hours. Many cooks now prefer cooking the filling first before assembling. A widely discussed 2012 article noted that a recipe putting raw meat in can end up gloopy or tough.

Common filling ingredients include carrots and onions, cooked with beef stock, red wine, or stout to add flavor. In British slang, Cockneys sometimes call steak and kidney pudding “Kate and Sydney Pud,” while some in the Armed Forces and parts of Northwest England refer to it as “babbies’ heads.”