
The steak and kidney pie is a typical British dish with a filling of diced beef steak and beef (ox), lamb's or pig's kidneys in a thick sauce. It is often, but not always, a one-crust pie, which means that the filling is covered but not completely enclosed by the pastry.Besides being made fresh in a kitchen or a restaurant, food processing firms offer this foodstuff frozen in a box, or canned (in a tin). Large cans tend to be about twenty cm (eight inches) in diameter on top, about five cm (two inches) high, and the outside edge cones downward, just like an aluminium pie pan.The sauce typically consists of beef broth, flavoured with salt, pepper and parsley, onions, and thickened with flour, cornstarch or beurre manié. Two-crust steak and kidney pies are best made with hot water crust pastry, which is less likely to get soaked in sauce, but one-crust pies may also be made with puff pastry or shortcrust pastry.Steak and kidney pudding is a similar dish in which the contents are placed into a pudding dish lined and covered with suet pastry. The pudding is then steamed for several hours. In the British Armed Forces a pudding is sometimes called a "Baby's Head" and in certain areas of North West England primarily around Wigan and Leigh a "Babby's Yead" (Baby's Head).Steak and kidney pie/pudding is also sometimes colloquially known as Kate and Sidney pie/pudding, Snake and Kiddy pie/pudding or Snake and Pygmy pie/pudding. References^ Icons.org - steak-kidney-pie^ Brophy, John and Eric Partridge. The Long Trail: Soldiers' Songs and Slang, 1914�18, Revised edition. Sphere, 1969. ISBN 0-7221-1885-6.