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Giblet Pie with Oysters
Take the giblets of two chickens or of a turkey; stew until nearly done, and cut into inch pieces. Line the pan with a rich paste, mix the giblets with a quart of oysters, adding liquor enough to make the pie juicy. Add flour or rolled cracker enough to thicken it somewhat; also butter, pepper and salt; cover with crust, and bake until the top is brown.
A late-Victorian way of stretching the odd parts of a bird into a full supper dish. The instructions assume you already know how a two-crust pie behaves, so the gaps worth filling are quantities, temperatures, and the treatment of the oysters.
- What the giblets areHeart, gizzard, liver and neck, plus the wing tips if you have them. Two chickens' worth is roughly 3/4 to 1 lb of meat once trimmed and cut; a turkey's giblets alone will give about the same. Supermarket birds often no longer include them, so ask a butcher or buy a pack of chicken hearts and gizzards.
- Stew the tough parts, hold back the liverGizzards and hearts need 45 to 60 minutes at a bare simmer to become tender; the neck can go in with them for flavour. Liver needs five minutes at most and turns grainy and bitter beyond that, so poach it separately at the end. Keep the stewing liquid: it can be used along with the oyster liquor to moisten the pie.
- A quart of oystersThat is about 2 lb shucked, or two 16 oz tubs, and it is a generous amount against a pound of giblets. "Liquor" means the oyster's own juice from the tub, not spirits.
- Oysters overcookThis is the hinge. Oysters firm up in two or three minutes and go rubbery well before a double-crust pie is browned. Fill the pie with warm giblets and thickened gravy so the oysters spend as little time as possible in the oven, and pull the pie the moment the top colours.
- Thickening"Flour or rolled cracker enough to thicken it somewhat" comes to about 3 tablespoons of flour, or a scant cup of finely crushed unsalted crackers, worked into 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter and the reserved stock. Oysters release a lot of water in the oven, so err on the thick side of "somewhat" or the bottom crust will dissolve.
- Oven"Bake until the top is brown" for a filling that is already cooked means hot and fast: 425F for 25 to 30 minutes. A slower oven gives you a pale crust and grey oysters.
- The bottom crustA wet filling in a lined pan is the weak point of the recipe. Blind bake the lower crust for 15 minutes at 400F before filling, or build the pie with a top crust only in a deep dish.
- YieldA 9- to 10-inch deep pie, six servings as a main course with a green vegetable.
Giblet pie belongs to a long English tradition of using every part of a bird, and it appears in American cookbooks throughout the nineteenth century, often as the thing you make the day you roast a turkey. Before the Chesapeake and Long Island beds were fished out and before refrigeration made beef cheap year-round, oysters were an inexpensive, widely shipped protein, and cooks used them the way a later generation used canned mushroom soup: to add body, salt and richness to anything from stuffing to steak pie. A quart of them in a family pie was ordinary rather than luxurious. The pairing of giblets and oysters also solves a real problem, since giblets are lean and strongly flavoured, and the oysters and their liquor supply the sweetness and moisture the offal lacks.