Day 8 - Fray Bentos Just Steak Pie

With apologies to Trollope

The Bishop of Exeter’s son was no good.  He had been a slovenly student planted in his Oxford college like so many of his ilk, by a father’s reputation for diligence and not his own.  The discovery one night of large quantities of Port from the college wine cellar in his study was put down to impish buffoonery, but only after it was discovered that his father the Bishop was moved to make a substantial endowment to the foundations of the college library.  The foundations of the college library being those very walls that supported the dusty shelves of the wine cellar too.  Such was the emphasis on quality of learning at the college that even before the endowment from the Bishop of Exeter the worth of the cellar was greater than the worth of the books above it.  Many from the college went on to Westminster carrying the same priorities.

It was whilst at College though that the young buck accidentally, it might be said, set is his name in the annals of pie making.  An obnoxious chap he was given to making demands of the college kitchen which wrought havoc.  He had in his first year insisted that roast chickens were served with four legs creating a surplus of chicken breasts of such great profundity that at one point they were being fed to the dogs.  His zenith, both as student and as scholar was to ask for a Steak and Kidney Pie to be made without the kidney.  The cooks were aghast.  In doing so they created the steak pie which has gone from strength to strength across the realm and, if Buckingham Palace sources are to be believed, even is presented at table for her Majesty and her Consort Prince to enjoy.

No doubt this formulation would have been a trifling fad in the minds of many.  The poor will dream only of meat in their pies and rely on Parish generosity to determine which meat is provided for their succor.  But they could only wish for a future where that the option is made available to ordinary folk as well as those favoured by the Establishment.

I can think that no man at the time who could dream of a pie in every household - let alone a pie so cheap that a few hours of labour will suffice for its purchase.  No man could conceive of fires in kitchens capable of rendering it edible within the very container from whence it is delivered.  No man was able to savour a gravy delivered pie after pie: thick and lustrous as any fragrant sauce from a Parisian Cuisinarie, not salty but red-bloodied with stock and marrow and of a hue befitting the finest table.  None willingly testify that in future meat pies will be available without the accented taste and texture of offal in them. Their forefather’s have achieved many things including the emancipation of individuals from lives of slavery, the steam engine and the crochet egg-cup cosy.  But they did not achieve all these things for future pie consumers. Politicians and writers in the press and of learn’d ledgers, pamphleteers, journeymen scribblers and local parish secretaries, would not for many years dream of a pastry so light that it floats about the dish all ready to ascend to the Heavans.

And yet, it is important men of fortune conceive of such dreams so that their enterprises have a purpose, their labours are to an end and that by such manufactory, the British Empire can extend its magnificence to the glory of their Emperors and Empress’.

But by his marked awkwardness, that child of the Bishop of Exeter unknowingly started a revolution in pie making which would end with those dreams being fulfilled. He was an unexceptional student even amongst his many undistinguished fraternity.  His progress was slow and his indiscretions many.  He scraped a lowly degree and was packed of by his father to his Uncle’s shipping office.  His office work was undertaken in the same dilatory manner as his student years.  His uncle determined to make something of his brother’s only male offspring challenged him to go out into the world to make his mark for to stay and go work for the company’s rat catcher.  The idle man discovered some fervor at the prospect and caught the next steamer to the Americas.  Life aboard was more arduous than the Bishop’s son had ever encountered.  He was subject to many ignominious routines as a lowly member of the crew and he pined for the comforts of an office.  His only respites came on occasions when tinned meat was served to the officers aboard, he crept into the kitchens and fight off the rats, he’d scoop leftover meat from the canisters.

Traveling down the coast through lands and islands he had only read about in books.  He made plans for returning to England as soon as he had that one idea which would settle his score with his Uncle and please his father.  There were Mexican traders with whom he discussed the idea of a highly spiced beef product which if taken at the strength recommended by the locals would cause extreme personal distress - he felt the time for painful food was some way off.  The passage of the steamer took them into South America - where the strangeness of the customs and sights was incredible to the young man.  So great was his enchantment with the region that he disembarked at a small town in the Rio Negro region at the mouth of the river Uruguay.

He decided to stay in this town - he later recalled - for three reasons.  His miserable shipboard diet was something he could no longer take, in this small town there was a meat processing works handling the finest beef he had every seen, smelt or tasted - and it was doing so in industrial quantities.  The second reason was the tremendous commercial prospects he saw in this meat as it was loaded onto steamers and taken all over the world.  The third reason was the daughter of the owner of the meat processing works who was attracted to this pasty Englishman and to whom he became a devoted admirer and husband.  he was drawn into the family concern by a discerning and encouraging fatehr in law.  And his betrothal prompted a more business like approach.   

The family business grew and exported the meat further afield - the Bishop’s son applied his mind to developing a European market and persuaded his father-in-law to export to Britain and America.  The owner, a local man was bullish about the product and spoke of it with regional pride but his son in law explained that the English would value a local place more than a Black River Region, nor River Uruguay .  They opted, with a quintessentially English loyalty to his local environs to called his tinned meat products after the town the owner was born into and had built into a mighty trading base, "Fray Bentos".

The first tins of meat, finest steak took the homes of the rich by storm as a curiosity.  Beef packed in cans in Uruguay seemed quite too exotic to ignore.  The Bishop was even amazed to find some on the menu of luncheon menu at the Synod. When he enquired of its provenance, and he was told it had come from the small town of Fray Bentos, huge tears welled, observers said, in his eyes.  When he inquired into the price of a tin of such a delicacy, observers said, that a grin quite unbecoming in a bishop joined the tears.

Only in later years, when the Bishop’s grandsons took over the meat processing works did their happily retired father mention the idea of a pastry topping for the meat in a can.  Tinned pies were soon tumbling off the production line and the Fray Bentos meat graced pies supplied to the British Empire.  The pies were then as they are now - quite a treat on the family table.  The rich gravy complementing all manner of vegetables and in particular the mashed potato.  The thin layers of diaphanous puff pastry one a top another seemingly a thousand times over adds a small act of theatre to the suburban home as it is withdrawn from the oven. The receptacle as oven ware is a delight to those who admire the commercial stamp as much as those who do not regret the passing of the pie dish.  Few realise the opportunism that brought forth such wares onto even the middle class home, less still a future which would hold that such a pie could be purchase for less than a pint of beer.

The Bishop’s son is buried in a family vault, alongside the banks of the Rio Negro,  his father’s grave in Exeter Cathedral is unassuming and makes no mention of his son’s endeavours which maybe surprising since they have since the 1900s have graced so many kitchens. Unlike so much of the British Empire traditions once set deep into the psyche: loyalty to the Empire, profligacy with other’s mineral rights and the building of short railways - the steak pie remains a stalwart, set in the culinary fabric of so many nations.  It finds it finest exponent still in the products of Fray Bentos, with or without kidney.