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French Giblet Pie
Clean very nicely the giblets of four chickens. Put them into a stewpan with a sliced onion and a small bouquet of sweet herbs. Add little water; cover the pan closely and let them stew until the giblets are tender. Then take them out and strain all the gravy from the seasoning articles. Make a rich paste, and roll it out into two sheets. With one sheet cover the sides and bottom of a deep dish. Put in the giblets-mixing among them a small quantity of boiled potatoes sliced, the chopped yolks of some hard-boiled eggs, and some bits of butter rolled in flour. Pour the gravy over the giblets. Cover the pie with the other sheet of paste, and notch the edges. Bake it brown, and serve hot. over
A thrift pie built from the parts left over when four birds were dressed. The main adjustments are sourcing the giblets at all, and keeping the livers from turning to grit.
- Sourcing the gibletsThe giblets of four chickens means roughly four sets of gizzard, heart, liver and neck, about 1 to 1 1/2 lb total. Butchers and Asian and Latin markets sell gizzards and hearts by the tub; supermarket birds often hide a bag inside the cavity. Necks add gelatin to the gravy but should be picked over and the bones discarded before the pie is filled.
- Stew the livers separatelyGizzards and hearts want 45 to 60 minutes of gentle simmering to become tender; livers are done in 5 to 8 and go chalky past that. Cook the tough parts first, drop the livers in at the very end, or poach them apart and fold them in cold.
- "Little water"Enough to come about halfway up the giblets, perhaps a cup, with the lid on tight so the pan half-steams. What is left after straining is the gravy, and there should be roughly a cup of it for the finished pie. If it has reduced to almost nothing, top it up with stock.
- A bouquet of sweet herbsPeriod shorthand for parsley, thyme and a bay leaf tied together, sometimes with marjoram or savory. It is lifted out and thrown away, which is what the instruction to strain off the seasoning articles means.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, about 1 tablespoon of each here. Dotted through the filling it thickens the gravy as the pie bakes. Without it the liquid stays thin and floods the bottom crust.
- Rich pasteA short pastry made with a generous proportion of butter or lard; period usage of the term is not consistent, and some books mean a puff paste by it. Figure on about 1 lb of pastry for a deep 9-inch dish. Chill the lined dish before filling.
- Bake it brownThe recipe gives no temperature; something around 400F for 35 to 45 minutes will do, until the top is well coloured and the gravy bubbles. Everything inside is already cooked, so the oven is only setting the pastry and thickening the sauce.
- YieldA deep 9-inch pie, enough for four to six as a main course with a green vegetable. It reheats well.
Giblet pie is generally regarded as English in origin, appearing in household books from the seventeenth century onward as a standard use for the offal and necks that came with a dressed bird — little that a cook had paid for was likely to be thrown away. The addition of "French" in nineteenth-century American books like this one usually signals nothing more than a claim to refinement, in this case perhaps the bouquet of sweet herbs and the strained gravy rather than a straight flour-thickened one; no distinct French dish appears to lie behind the name. What the recipe suggests is a poultry economy that has largely disappeared: four birds handled at once, with the giblets set aside to become a second meal. Supermarket poultry broke that link, and giblets now have to be bought deliberately rather than simply turning up.