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Beef Pie, Savoury
Lay some slices of beef at the bottom of a pie-dish, then a little minced Bath chap; add pepper and salt to taste, a little chopped onion, and a quarter of a pint of good gravy. Put a layer of tomatoes over, and over these some sliced potatoes and two ounces of butter. Bake in a moderate oven for one hour, or until the potatoes are soft and brown. Probable cost, 1s. 4d.
A crustless pie in the older English sense: meat, vegetables and a potato lid baked in a deep dish. The whole thing hinges on cutting the beef thin enough to be tender within the hour the potatoes need.
- Bath chapThe cured and usually smoked lower cheek and jaw of a pig, sold cooked and breadcrumbed in Victorian shops. Thick-cut smoked bacon, gammon or pancetta, finely minced, gives the same salty-smoky note; use 2-3 oz for a family-sized dish and hold back on added salt.
- Moderate oven350F/180C. One hour at that heat browns the potato lid but will only soften beef that is sliced thin, so cut it no thicker than a quarter inch across the grain, or use skirt or chuck pounded flat.
- A quarter of a pint of gravy5 fl oz imperial, about two-thirds of a US cup. It should be a well-reduced brown gravy or good stock; watery liquid will boil up through the potatoes and stop them browning.
- The pie-dishA deep 1.5-2 pint ovenproof dish, roughly an 8-inch square or oval baker. Layer in the order given so the butter dotted on top bastes the potatoes as it melts.
- TomatoesFresh tomatoes were still a relatively uncommon ingredient in English household cookery around this date. Drain very juicy ones on paper first, or use halved cherry tomatoes, so the layer does not flood the dish.
- Butter on topTwo ounces is 4 tablespoons, dotted over the potatoes rather than stirred in. If the top is pale at the hour mark, raise the heat to 425F for the last ten minutes.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of beef; roughly 1 to 1.5 lb would serve about four. Rest it five minutes before serving so the layers hold when cut.
Cassell's places this among its plainer household dishes, where "pie" still meant anything baked in a pie-dish, with or without pastry; a potato lid was the cheap option when flour and butter for a crust were not worth the outlay. The Bath chap is the period detail: the cured cheek of a pig, associated with Bath and, by tradition at least, with the long-jawed Gloucester Old Spot breed, it was a cheap cut sold ready-cooked and used, as here, in small quantities to season a larger dish of beef. The stated cost of 1s. 4d. belongs to the book's habit of pricing every recipe so a housekeeper could weigh one dinner against another, and it marks this as an economical family supper rather than company food.