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Steak and Kidney Pie

A savory pie filled with diced steak, kidney, and seasoned meat, encased in flaky pastry and baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steak and Kidney Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove fat from the steak and cut it into dice.

  2. Cut the meat into neat strips.

  3. Skin and halve the kidney, wash well, and cut into dice.

  4. Dip the meat into seasoned flour (flour, salt, and pepper).

  5. Place a piece of kidney and a piece of fat on each strip of meat and roll them up.

  6. Pack the rolls in a pie dish and half-fill with water.

Make the crust

  1. Roll out the pastry.

  2. Wet the edges of the pie dish.

  3. Line the pie dish with a strip of pastry.

  4. Wet the lined edge.

  5. Cover with the crust.

  6. Make a hole in the center.

  7. Trim and flake the edges.

Glaze and bake

  1. Brush the top with beaten egg.

  2. Ornament with leaves.

  3. Brush the leaves with beaten egg.

  4. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for the first half hour.

  5. Lower the heat to moderate (350°F / 175°C) and continue baking for another hour and a half, or until the meat is tender.

  6. Fill up with hot, seasoned stock.

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. Flour + peppertop 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

Pie steak
Becomes tender and savory during long baking, giving the filling its body.
Sheep's kidney
Adds rich, distinctive flavor and savoriness to the filling.
Flour
Coats the meat and thickens the juices in the filling.
Flaky pastry
Forms a crisp, layered crust that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Bake low and long until the meat is tender. Tough cuts like pie steak and kidney need prolonged gentle heat so their connective tissue breaks down into tender meat. Rushing this stage or baking too hot leaves the meat chewy and can overcook the pastry before the filling is ready.

“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.

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