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Veal Pie
Boil a knuckle of veal with little salt until it drops from the bone, then take out all the meat and boil the bone and gristle until the liquor will turn to jelly when cold. Next morning have some sliced hard-boiled eggs and some very small pieces of breakfast bacon. Then take a deep dish and put in a layer of veal, then a layer of the hard-boiled eggs, and a layer of the breakfast bacon, then a layer of the veal, and so on until the dish is full. Then melt the jelly from the liquor, season with pepper and salt and pour all over the pie, then put on a top of puff paste, and leave one or two vents for the steam to escape, and bake in a rather quick oven. As soon as the paste is done take it out and let get stone cold before eating. This is most delicious for a supper or luncheon. Also much used for "picnics." -Mrs. E. A. B.
CHAPTER XVII.
A cold veal-and-egg pie of the English picnic type, set in its own jelly. Nearly everything depends on the stock gelling, so start there.
- The hinge: a stock that actually setsThe gel comes only from collagen in the bone and gristle, so keep reducing the second boiling until a spoonful chilled on a saucer sets firm. If it does not, reduce further or soften a teaspoon of powdered gelatine per cup of liquid into it; a pie whose jelly stays liquid will not slice.
- Knuckle of vealThe shank end, sold today as veal shank (the cut used for osso buco), bone in. Two to three pounds should give enough picked meat for a deep 8- to 9-inch dish. Veal shank can be hard to find at ordinary butchers; beef shank works in its place but tastes markedly stronger.
- Breakfast baconIn this period generally thin sliced streaky bacon, and likely saltier than most modern supermarket bacon. Cut it into pieces the size of a fingernail, and hold back on the added salt until you have tasted the seasoned jelly cold, since chilling mutes salt.
- "A rather quick oven"The book gives no figures; a quick oven is conventionally taken as somewhere around 400 to 450F. The heat sets and colours the pastry, which takes about 30 to 40 minutes. Sit the dish on a tray, as jelly will seep from the vents.
- Puff pasteAll-butter puff pastry, rolled to about a quarter inch. A shop-bought sheet is entirely in keeping with what the recipe wants from it. Cut the two vents before baking, not after, or the lid will lift and split.
- Filling the dishPack the layers tightly and pour the melted jelly in warm, not boiling, until it rises just below the rim. Air pockets in a cold pie collapse under the knife.
- Cooling and keeping"Stone cold" means fully set, which takes several hours. Cool at room temperature no more than two, then refrigerate, and keep it cold at the picnic too; a meat pie in aspic left out on a summer afternoon is the classic setting for bacterial growth.
- YieldA deep 9-inch dish serves six to eight as a lunch or supper dish with pickles and salad. It cuts best on the second day.
Cold pies of veal, ham and hard-boiled egg bound in their own jelly are an English tradition that ran straight through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into household books like this one. The technique is older than commercial gelatine: boiling a knuckle bone twice, once for the meat and again for the liquor, was a common domestic way of getting a set, and the resulting jelly did double duty as seasoning and as a seal that kept air off the meat. That last property is why such pies travelled, and why this one is recommended for picnics; a well-jellied pie was among the few cooked meat dishes a household without refrigeration could carry out of doors with reasonable confidence. The initials at the end, "Mrs. E. A. B.," mark it as a contributed receipt, the usual way these compilations were assembled from the cooks of a community.