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Steak and Kidney Pie

A pie of steak, kidney, and bacon with a butter‑flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 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 (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Prepare the steak and kidney as for Steak and Kidney Pudding, then dip each piece in flour.

  2. Fill a pie dish with the meat, raising it slightly higher in the center than at the sides, and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Half fill the dish with water.

Make and cover the pastry

  1. For the paste, break the butter into small pieces among the flour, mix in the salt, and add cold water to form a firm paste.

  2. Roll out the paste four times.

  3. Put a border of paste around the wet edge of the pie dish, moisten it, and lay the cover over loosely to allow for shrinkage.

  4. Cut the paste even with the edge of the dish all around.

  5. Brush the top with egg, decorate with paste leaves, and make a vent in the center.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Coats the meat and forms the structure of the pastry when mixed with fat and water.
Butter
Rubbed into flour, it keeps the pastry short and tender and adds richness.
Steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through slow cooking in the filling.
Kidney
Adds a rich, savoury, deeply meaty flavour to the filling.
Egg (in the method)
Brushed on top, it promotes browning and a glossy golden crust.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water to the paste. Cold water keeps the butter in small solid pieces, which create flaky layers; warm water melts the fat and makes the pastry tough. Rolling the paste several times builds further layers and structure.

“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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