A century-old recipe for steak and kidney pie reveals the harsh reality of vintage cooking
When we recreated a beef steak and kidney pie using a 1914 teaching manual, the results were polarizing. While the homemade rough puff pastry was a triumph of technique, the meat filling provided a surprisingly difficult tasting experience that modern palates might struggle to endure.
In an attempt to test the culinary standards of the early 20th century, we followed a recipe from a Battersea Polytechnic training manual, estimated to have been published around 1914–1915. This era of domestic science education emphasized rigorous technique, particularly in the creation of rough puff pastry through a process of lamination, folding, and careful rolling to preserve air pockets.
The method for the filling itself was strikingly different from contemporary standards. The recipe required no pre-cooking of the meat; instead, diced beef and kidney were simply tossed in flour and seasoning and placed directly into the pie dish. The pastry was rolled to a thickness of approximately half an inch and sealed over the meat with a liquid binder.
The baking process involved an initial period in a hot oven to ensure the pastry rose well, followed by a much longer period of cooking at a reduced heat for four hours. This slow-cooking approach was intended to tenderize the raw ingredients, but as our real-time taste test revealed, the final result was far from universally palatable. While the pastry was a success, the filling remains a subject of intense debate.
This experiment highlights the evolution of cooking science. What was once taught as a fundamental skill in a professional training department now serves as a fascinating, if sometimes unappetizing, window into how much our expectations for texture and seasoning have changed over the last hundred years.
Source: I Made Steak & Kidney Pie from a 1915 Cookbook… Regrets Were Had
