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Chicken Pie
Take two large chickens, and cut them into neat joints. Put the trimmings, neck, and bones of the legs into a stewpan, with some pepper and salt, a blade of mace, an onion, a bunch of savoury herbs, and a little water, or stock. Let these simmer gently for one hour and a half. They are to make gravy. Line the edges of a pie-dish with a good crust. Put a layer of chicken at the bottom, then a layer of ham cut in slices, and over that some sausage-meat or forcemeat, and some hard-boiled eggs cut in slices. Repeat until the dish is full. Pour over all a cupful of water or white stock, and place a cover on the top. Brush over it the yolk of an egg. Bake in a good oven. When the pie has been in the oven about half an hour, place a piece of paper over the top to prevent the crust from being frizzled up before the meat is sufficiently cooked. When it is ready, raise the cover and pour in the gravy made from the bones. Put a trussing-needle into the pie to ascertain whether it is sufficiently cooked. If it goes through easily, take the pie out. A pie made with two chickens, sufficient for six persons. Probable cost, 6s.
A Victorian raised-layer pie of jointed raw chicken, ham and forcemeat, baked under a lid of pastry with the bone stock poured in at the end. The method is sound; only the oven language and the doneness test need translating.
- The hinge: raw meat under a sealed crustThe chicken, ham and sausage-meat or forcemeat all go in uncooked (only the eggs are pre-cooked), so the pastry will be tempting long before the chicken is. The recipe gives no total time; a deep dish will likely want something in the region of 1½ hours, and it should be judged by the meat rather than the colour of the crust.
- "A good oven"The book gives no temperature. Conventionally this is read as a hot oven: something like 425F (220C) for the first 20-30 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then around 350F (180C) for the remainder. The paper laid over the top after half an hour serves much the same purpose as dropping the heat, and is still a neat way to stop the lid scorching.
- DonenessThe trussing-needle test tells you the meat is tender, not that it is safe. Slide an instant-read thermometer through the crust into the thickest chicken joint and into the sausage-meat: both want 165F (74C).
- Two large chickensVictorian table fowl were often smaller and older than modern supermarket birds. Two birds of about 3 lb each, jointed, should roughly fill a deep 2½-3 quart pie dish; a single 5-6 lb bird, jointed, would do much the same work.
- Blade of maceThe dried outer casing of nutmeg, sold whole as "blades". A quarter teaspoon of ground mace is a fair substitute in the stock, added at the end of simmering rather than the beginning.
- ForcemeatIn this book it generally means a bound seasoned stuffing: breadcrumbs, suet or butter, chopped herbs, lemon zest, egg. The recipe offers sausage-meat as an alternative to it, and good pork sausage-meat needs no adjustment.
- The gravySimmering the carcass, neck and leg bones for 1½ hours in "a little water" gives a modest quantity of light stock; strain it, and reduce it if it tastes thin, so it carries flavour rather than diluting the pie. Add it hot, raising the cover as the recipe directs, as the pie comes out of the oven.
- Lining "the edges" onlyThis is a pie with a lid and no bottom crust — a strip of pastry is pressed round the rim of the dish so the cover has something to seal against. The egg yolk wash is best thinned with a teaspoon of water or it will streak.
- Yield and costSix generous portions, as stated. The 6s. is late-Victorian retail and useful only as a reminder that a pie of two chickens, ham and sausage was a substantial outlay, not everyday food.
Layered cold-cut pies of this kind sit between the medieval raised coffin pie and the modern picnic pie: the ham, forcemeat and sliced hard-boiled egg are there as much to fill and firm the pie as to season it, and the stock poured in at the end sets to a light jelly as it cools. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, an enormous late nineteenth-century alphabetical compendium aimed at middle-class households and their cooks, habitually gives a "probable cost" and a number of persons served — a sign of a readership budgeting a table rather than following a chef. The instruction to lay paper over the crust is a standard workaround for coal-fired ranges, where a cook managing fierce top heat could shield the pastry physically as well as adjusting dampers and shelf position.