In her book Bold Palates, Barbara Santich writes that Kangaroo Steamer was first described by naval officer and author Charles Jeffreys who, in 1820, published Geographical and Descriptive Delineations of the Island of Van Diemen’s Land . The dish was very popular in colonial Australia and consisted of kangaroo meat with pork or bacon and various spices, packed into a tightly sealed jar and steamed in a cooking pot. The fatty bacon or pork compensated for the rather dry texture of the lean kangaroo meat.

As several food historians have pointed out, in early colonial days white settlers were quite prepared to take advantage of local game to supplement their diets. Kangaroo tail soup was among the dishes regularly prepared, with one account suggesting that if a lady were present at a kangaroo hunt, the tail of the beast should be presented to her for soup-making.

The recipes for kangaroo were based on traditional English cookery. Kangaroo-tail soup was akin to ox-tail soup, while kangaroo steamer was based on jugged hare. Santich quotes Jeffreys, who described a meal which “consisted of the hind quarters of a kangaroo cut into mince-meat, stewed in its own gravy, with a few rashers of salt pork, this dish is commonly called a steamer.”

In 1837, the wife of the governor of Tasmania (then Van Diemen’s Land) described a dinner she attended at which a steamer was served:

Excellent dinner [at the Commandant, Captain Booth’s cottage], kangaroo soup ? [questionable], but steamer excellent. Is made by layer of pork then layer of thin bits of kangaroo, sprinkled with fine pot herbs, or what is better with nutmeg and so on, made into a round, like a small fillet of veal, no water, but steamed by its own gravy – was very good.

The steamer seems to have been particularly popular in Tasmania, but it was mentioned in accounts from New South Wales as early as 1827. The Australian wrote:

Those who have partaken of these gypsey meals in the bush, always speak with delight of the enjoyment afforded. Indeed the pleasure of eating, what you have had the previous pleasure of killing, must give a double zest to such a sport-man like feast…But a kangaroo steamer — why the fellow that could suffer even the tithe of a soldier’s grace to be muttered without diving into the dish, deserves to be dieted on cabbage and red herrings during the remainder of his rascally life. Nay, even, if but a whiff of the steam could be wafted among your English gourmands, they would hang themselves to a fraction, in downright desperation, that their palates should be unable to share in the raptures of the nose ; while that great Emperor of Epicures, the illustrious Sir William himself, in order to enjoy but the brief delights of a spoonful of the skum, might be tempted to pick his Majesty’s pockets on a Levee day, in order to secure himself a passage out.

In 1859, Grey’s Restaurant, in Geelong, Victoria, was advertising a range of kangaroo dishes: Kangaroo Soup, Kangaroo Steaks, Kangaroo Steamers,  and Kangaroo a la Venison. Edward Abbott, the author of Australia’s first home-grown cookery book published in 1864, gave three recipes for kangaroo steamer. The one identified as the “author’s recipe” was as follows:

This is a simple species of braise, and, as its name imports, the meat is steamed. Cut the meat in pieces of about a quarter of an inch square, and put it into a pan with a well-covered lid, with a spoonful of milk, an onion shredded into small pieces, and some pepper and salt to taste. When it has been on the fire a short time, add about a tenth in quantity of salt pork, or bacon, cut to the same size as the kangaroo, with a spoonful of ketchup. Serve hot with jelly.

The Tasmanian contribution to the  Intercolonial Exhibition of 1866, held in Melbourne as a prelude to the 1867 International Exposition in Paris, featured three tins of kangaroo steamer, produced by Mrs Sarah Crouch. Just a single can was to be sent to Paris.

Recipes for kangaroo steamer and other kangaroo dishes continued to appear in newspapers into the early years of the 20th century. However, in the early decades of that century, all states introduced health and game laws that made it illegal to sell the meat for human consumption. In 1980, South Australia became the first state to legalise its sale, with other states lifting their bans in the 1990s. Have we seen a return of the kangaroo steamer to household tables? Sadly, the “raptures of the nose”  it produced seem to have been consigned to history.