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Fieldfare Pasties
Take half a dozen birds-fieldfares, snipes, woodcocks, quails, and young plovers-draw them, and put the insides into a stewpan with a little butter, first taking out any grit from the gizzards. When they have steamed enough in the butter (they should not brown) take them out, and put the birds in to brown lightly. Remove them; add a little more butter, and stir in three or four eggs well beaten with a tea-cupful of milk. Have ready a forcemeat of veal, bacon, and calf's liver, in the proportion of one pound and a half of veal to half a pound of bacon, and the same of liver. Season with pepper, salt, and spice. Stir this mince into the stewpan, and when it is sufficiently dressed, and thick enough, spread a layer over the bottom of a dish, and when a sweetbread is obtainable cut it, when boiled, into pieces the size of a small nutmeg, and mix these with it. The birds and their trails must now be laid on the forcemeat, with a sprinkling of salt and pepper, and a good squeeze of lemon-juice; the rest should be laid upon them, and a cover of paste over all. Bake in a good oven, and pour in a little rich gravy with a funnel when done. Time, three-quarters of an hour to one hour to bake. Probable cost: snipes, 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. the brace; woodcocks, 3s. each: quails, 1s. to 2s.; plovers, 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. the brace.
This is a Victorian game-market recipe that depends on birds no longer available to a cook in Britain or most of Europe, and on a handling practice that would not pass now. The notes below explain what the text is asking for and why it cannot be followed.
- Fieldfares are protectedThe fieldfare (Turdus pilaris) is a migratory thrush and is protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981; it is not a quarry species there, and killing, taking, selling or possessing one is an offence. Elsewhere the position varies: under the EU Birds Directive it is listed as huntable in certain member states.
- Plovers likewiseThe "young plovers" of the original mean lapwing or golden plover, both once sold openly in game markets. The lapwing is now protected in Britain and is red-listed as a species of conservation concern, and its eggs — a separate Victorian delicacy — are off limits; the golden plover remains legal quarry in season.
- Snipe and woodcock are tightly regulatedThese two remain legal quarry in season in some jurisdictions, but seasons, bag limits and sale rules vary and change. A recipe calling for half a dozen mixed small waders assembled at will belongs to a market that no longer exists.
- The "trails" are the problem, not just the birdsWoodcock and snipe were traditionally cooked undrawn and the intestine, the trail, eaten as a relish. Here the viscera are lightly steamed in butter, laid in among the forcemeat, and given the three-quarters of an hour to one hour the recipe allows, under a pastry lid. Game gut carries the bird's own gut flora and whatever parasites it was hosting; nothing in this method guarantees the interior of the pie reaches a safe temperature throughout.
- Sweetbreads and calf's liverBoth are still sold, but offal from young calves is a specialist butcher's order rather than a supermarket item. Sweetbread here means the thymus or pancreas, poached first, then cut into pieces "the size of a small nutmeg" — roughly 2 cm.
- What the quantities amount toThe forcemeat alone is 1.5 lb veal, 0.5 lb bacon and 0.5 lb liver: about 1.1 kg of meat, enough for a large deep dish serving eight or more. The birds are a garnish inside a substantial meat pie, not the bulk of it.
- The prices date it preciselyThree shillings for a single woodcock, and snipe at up to half a crown the brace, were serious money in a household where a servant might earn £20 a year. This was a dish for a table with a game dealer's account.
- If you want the shape of the dishA modern raised or covered game pie recipe, using farmed quail or other legally sold game, will give you the same architecture of forcemeat, whole birds and pastry lid with gravy poured in through a funnel after baking. Use a current recipe rather than adapting this one.
Cassell's places this among small-bird cookery of a kind that filled British and continental game markets until well into the twentieth century: thrushes, larks, plovers and waders sold by the brace and treated as luxuries. The fieldfare is a winter-visiting thrush, fat on berries by December, and was netted in quantity across northern Europe he eating small thrushes survived far longer than the British one. The instruction to keep the trail is the giveaway detail of period woodcock and snipe cookery, in which the bird's gut was thought too good to waste and was spread on toast or worked into the forcemeat. The trick of funnelling gravy into a baked pie through the hole in the crust is standard Victorian practice and still the right way to fill a raised pie without turning the pastry to paste. What has changed is not the technique but the supply, and the recipe survives as a record of what a well-stocked poulterer's window looked like rather than as something to cook.