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Giblet Pie, with Fine Herbs
Procure two sets of goose giblets (cleaned), scald them, then immerse in cold water, and drain upon a napkin. Then cut the giblets into pieces about two inches long. Trim them neatly, and place in a stewpan with a carrot, an onion stuck with four cloves, a garnished fagot of parsley, and season with pepper and a little salt; moisten with a quart of good broth and a glass of sherry, and set them to stew gently over a slow fire. When done remove the carrot, onion, and fagot of parsley; drain the giblets into a sieve, skim off all the grease from the broth, and after having put it back in a stewpan, thicken it with a little roux, and boil the sauce over a fire for fifteen minutes, stirring the whole time with a wooden spoon. Reduce the sauce to about one pint, then remove it from the fire. Next cover the bottom of the dish with scallops of fillet of beef, season with fine herbs, mushrooms, parsley, a little sweet basil, and two shallots, adding cayenne pepper, and salt; over these pour half the sauce, then fill the dish up with the giblets, which place in neat order; sprinkle some fine herbs upon them, and pour the remainder of the sauce over the whole. Cover the pie with puff paste, bake it for an hour and a quarter, and send to table. CHAPTER X.
A Victorian professional-kitchen pie: the giblets are fully stewed and sauced before they ever meet pastry, so the bake is really only about cooking the crust and heating the filling through. Read the ingredient list before shopping, since the phrasing hides several things a modern cook has to translate.
- Two sets of gibletsA set means the neck, heart, gizzard and liver of one goose — in Victorian usage the pinions and feet were often counted in as well — so this calls for the trimmings of two birds. Butchers rarely sell goose giblets loose; turkey or duck giblets can be substituted, and some cooks prefer to leave the livers out of a stew this long, as they can muddy the sauce.
- Scald, then chillThe scalding and cold-water plunge is a cleaning step, not cooking. It firms the gizzard and lets you strip the tough silverskin off it cleanly, and that membrane stays chewy even after a long stew.
- Garnished fagot of parsleyA bouquet garni: parsley stalks with thyme and a bay leaf tied in a bundle, or wrapped in a leek leaf. It is pulled out and discarded with the carrot and clove-stuck onion.
- A glass of sherryIn cookbooks of this period a wine glass is about 2 fl oz, though the measure was never standardised; anything up to 1/2 cup is within the spirit of the dish. Use a dry amontillado or fino, not cream sherry.
- RouxEqual weights of butter and flour cooked together — about 2 tablespoons of each should bring this quantity of broth to roughly the consistency wanted. The fifteen minutes of boiling cooks out the raw flour taste; the recipe then asks separately for the sauce to be reduced to about a pint, which may take longer.
- Scallops of fillet of beefThin slices of beef tenderloin, cut across and lightly flattened, laid in a single layer on the bottom of the dish. They cook in the sauce during the bake, so keep them no more than 1/4 inch thick.
- Fine herbsFines herbes — the recipe spells out its own version in the next clause: mushrooms, parsley, a little sweet basil and two shallots, all chopped fine. Chives and tarragon would be the usual modern reading.
- Oven heatNone is given. Start at 425F for 15 minutes to set and lift the puff paste, then drop to 350F for the remaining hour. Cut a vent in the lid or use a pie funnel, or the reduced sauce will lift the pastry off the filling.
- YieldA pint of sauce, two sets of giblets and a layer of beef would fill something on the order of a 9- to 10-inch deep dish. The recipe gives no yield; six servings is a guess.
Giblet pie belonged to the thrift end of English cookery long before it acquired sherry and fillet of beef: the giblets were what remained after the goose itself went to the spit, and a household that roasted a Michaelmas goose might expect a pie from the leavings a day or two later. The elaborate treatment here — a stew moistened with broth and wine, strained, degreased, thickened with roux and reduced to an exact pint, then layered over beef scallops — reads as professional kitchen practice rather than farmhouse cookery, and the phrasing ("a garnished fagot of parsley", "send to table") reflects the French-trained chefs whose books English and American compilers drew on freely through the second half of the nineteenth century.