On the day following King George V’s Silver Jubilee celebrations, 6th May 1935, George Orwell took a break from writing A Clergyman’s Daughter to type a letter to his friend and one-time romantic interest, Brenda Salkeld. Among Orwell’s usual topics of discussion (politics, literature, and low-culture) the author outlined what he described as a “wonderful” ox-kidney stew.

Remembering his late friend, the poet Paul Potts recalled Orwell as possessing “the same attitude to bubble and squeak as a Frenchman to Camembert. I’ll swear he valued tea and roast beef above the OM and the Nobel Prize.” Throughout his life, Orwell had a great fondness for food and drink and one needn’t venture too deeply into his work before emerging with evidence of this pre-occupation. In both Down and Out in Paris and London andThe Road to Wigan Pier he noted the “appalling” diet of bread, margarine and sugared tea that the hard-ups relied on for daily sustenance during the first half of the 20th century. Orwell knew what he liked and held clear views on how he liked his beer served, the article devoted to the perfect cup tea, the essay defending British cooking and his strong ideas on the unexpected dietary advantages of wartime rationing. “English people before the war usually ate too much sugar,” he wrote, “the war has brought home to a lot of people the value of vegetables.” He fished, picked wild berries, kept livestock for milking, and insisted on managing allotments and vegetable gardens even as the tuberculosis that would ultimately carry him off made an exhausting task of even the lightest physical exertion.

Following the war, the British Council commissioned Orwell to write a handbook on the topic of “British Cookery”. Ultimately, the pamphlet, containing recipes for Welsh Rarebit, Treacle Tart and Orange Marmalade, was never published, though Orwell still received his fee for the work. After spending several years in obscurity, the manuscript was recovered and donated to University College London, and over the last several decades, hoards of food writers and journalists have dissected, recreated, and reinterpreted Orwell’s recipes. However, for whatever reason, his stew recipe has remained largely forgotten. That was until now, of course. The recipe itself is a simple undertaking, consisting of:

1/2 lb Ox kidney chopped-up small
1/2 lb Mushrooms
1 Onion Chopped Fine
2 Cloves Garlic
Four Skinned Tomatoes,
1 Slice of Lean Bacon chopped up
Salt.
Stew for gently for 2.5 hours in very little beef stock

The recipe is textbook Orwell; free from any unnecessary pomp or frill. Unfortunately, and with consideration toward his famous attention to detail and precision with language, young Orwell’s recipe is rather vague by  way of specifying the variety of ingredients to be used. In an attempt to remain as faithful to both the recipe and the time in which it was written, I consulted with food historian and broadcaster, Dr. Annie Gray as well as a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Everyday Cookery  in confirming which products would have been available in Britain at that time. For the mushrooms, we went with champignons de paris, a variety that has been available in the UK since at least the 18th century. For the tomatoes, after some serious deliberation we settled on the classic heritage tomato, with edenrose garlic and a brown onion taking care of our vegetable needs. The local butcher fixed us for the kidneys and the bacon. As for the beef stock, we went with that humble British staple, the good-old Oxo cube.

There are also some practical considerations Orwell omitted in his recipe. For example, it is necessary to soak the kidneys in a little water and vinegar for a couple of hours in order to soften the uric flavour present when the organs are fresh. Leopold Bloom from Joyce’s Ulysses may have enjoyed the “fine tang of faintly scented urine” on his kidneys, but we do not. We also deviated a little from Orwell’s guidelines by coating the kidneys in a little flour prior to frying in order to thicken the stew – a discretion I’m sure George would have allowed.

As Orwell advised, we served the stew with spaghetti (though coquillettes would also have sufficed). As a nod to his time in Spain, we topped the dish with a few shavings of Manchego cheese and took our initial bites with trepidation. The verdict: The stew was actually quite delicious and considerably richer than we had anticipated. If you’re not intimidated by offal and fancy a taste of history then I’d strongly suggest trying it for yourself, especially during those colder winter months.