Deconstruct - Steak & Kidney Pie

Popularised in the 19th century, this British classic has since become a pub staple. And while over the centuries the ingredients have been up for some debate, these days the kidneys are non-negotiable

- Felicity Cloake

For a long while, British food didn’t have the best reputation. Accusations of blandness and overcooking may occasionally have been justified, but some of the criticism of our national cuisine might have been a simple matter of vocabulary. To the uninitiated, the names of dishes such as toad in the hole and spotted dick sound ambiguous at best, and unappealing at worst. Steak and kidney pie, however, is a much more literal proposition. It’s clear at a glance what you’ll find under the pastry lid, and while some offal-avoiders might not be keen on the idea of kidneys, for aficionados, they’re the best part.

Gary Rhodes, the chef who perhaps did more than any other to revive interest in such traditional food, referred to steak and kidney pie as “that most classic of British dishes”, but in fact, it doesn’t seem to have a particularly ancient pedigree. Pies themselves are a different story: as Pete Brown modestly claims in his book, Pie Fidelity, “Britain does pies better than anyone else in the world and has done since pastry was first perfected by chefs working for the Tudor monarchs.”

However, while the generously sized Henry VIII may have been a connoisseur of a good rough puff, the British pie is far older even than him. Thanks to the 14th-century poem Piers Plowman, we know the streets of medieval London rang to cries of ‘Pies, hot pies!’ — portable and robust, they’d have been the perfect fast food for both city dwellers and rural labourers alike.