Skip to main content
Main

Beef Steak and Kidney Pie

A savory pie made with beef steak, kidney, onion, suet crust, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Steak and Kidney Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak and kidney into small pieces, about 2 inches square.

  2. Stew the meat in cold water, just enough to cover, until tender.

  3. Add the chopped onion, salt, and pepper to the meat.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a deep dish and prepare the crust.

Make the crust

  1. For the crust, mix the suet, flour, pinch of salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add water gradually until you have a light paste that can be rolled out.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the meat mixture with the crust and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Steak
Provides the main meat body, becoming tender as it stews slowly in water.
Beef kidney
Adds a rich, deeply savoury meaty flavour to the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust short and tender as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust once mixed with water into a paste.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Stew the meat until tender. Steak and kidney are tough cuts that need long, gentle simmering in just enough water to break down their connective tissue before baking. Cooking them too briefly leaves the filling chewy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes