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Baked Chicken Pie
To make the crust, one and one-half pounds of butter to every pound of flour, and three teaspoonfuls of baking powder; chop one-half of butter into the prepared flour until it is well mixed in; add a little ice-cold water, and work it into a stiff dough; roll it into a thin sheet, and spread on onehalf of the remaining butter; fold it up butter side in, and re-roll it; then spread on all the butter; fold again as before and roll out thin; cut it the size required for the pie. Line the bottom and sides of a well-buttered earthen cake pan or pudding dish with the crust. Then to a large, tender chicken, add almost half a pound of salt pork. Have the pork chopped fine and lay on one layer of pork; pepper it, using no salt, and cover with pieces of chicken; then another layer of pork, and so on until the chicken is used up. Have three hard-boiled eggs chopped up and added with the chicken. Before laying on the top crust, place a few lumps of butter about the top and add water enough to make enough gravy as may be desired. Cut a star or other ornament on the top and bake for an hour in a slow oven.
A late-Victorian raised-style chicken pie: puff paste lining a deep dish, raw jointed chicken layered with salt pork and hard-boiled egg. Two things in the original need attention before you start — the crust ratio and the oven.
- The butter ratio is almost certainly a misprintThe butter ratio is unusual -- one and one-half pounds of butter to one pound of flour is more butter than flour, and a paste that rich is very awkward to roll. Many period puff pastes use roughly equal weights, and plainer pastes considerably less. Whether this figure is an error or simply an extravagant proportion cannot be established; a standard rough puff proportion is the safer bet.
- Slow ovenA slow oven in this period is 300-325F. That is a long, gentle bake suited to an earthenware dish, but it is the reason the stated hour is not enough for raw chicken in a deep pie.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockRaw jointed chicken buried under a top crust in a 300F oven will not be done in an hour. Either poach the chicken until nearly cooked before filling the pie, or bake until the centre of the filling reads 165F on a thermometer, covering the crust with foil if it colours first.
- Salt porkSalt pork is fatty side pork cured in brine, sold near bacon or from a butcher. Half a pound to one chicken is generous seasoning, which is why the recipe says to use no salt. Unsmoked bacon or pancetta will stand in; rinse and pat dry if very salty.
- Earthen cake pan or pudding dishA deep straight-sided stoneware or glass dish, roughly 2 to 2.5 quarts. Metal works but conducts faster, so watch the base of the crust.
- "Water enough to make gravy"About a cup for a full pie, poured in before the lid goes on. Chicken and pork release a good deal of liquid, so err low; too much and the bottom crust dissolves. Stock rather than water is a clear improvement.
- The vent mattersThe vent -- the cut star may serve as a steam vent as well as decoration; if the lid is left sealed the filling steams it from beneath and the crust goes soft.
- YieldA large chicken, half a pound of pork and three eggs in a deep dish serves six to eight, and it slices better after twenty minutes' rest.
Baked chicken pie of this kind sits between two older traditions: the English raised pie, in which meat was sealed in a sturdy crust that acted as both vessel and preservative, and the New England chicken pie built in a deep pudding dish with layers of salt pork for fat and savour. The salt pork is the practical heart of it — in a household kitchen before reliable refrigeration, cured pork was often to hand and did the work that butter, stock and salt do in a modern filling all at once, which is why the recipe insists on adding no salt. Hard-boiled egg chopped through poultry pies is an old habit, generally traced to medieval and early modern pie cookery, where it added body to a filling that could otherwise be thin. Turn-of-the-century compilations like this one printed puff paste instructions in the same breath as the filling, here in full detail, down to a pound of flour paired with a pound and a half of butter.