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Fish (salt) Pie
Take a thick piece of salt fish, and let it soak in cold water overnight. Boil it well, take it up, remove the bones and skin, and set it on a fish-drainer to get cold. Boil four eggs hard, shell them and slice them very thin; slice the same quantity of onions very thin; line the bottom of a pie-dish with a layer of potatoes also thinly sliced, then a layer of onions, then of fish, then of eggs, and so on in rotation until the dish is full, seasoning each layer with a little pepper. Mix a tea-spoonful of made mustard, the same of essence of anchovy, and a little ketchup in a gill of cold water, pour this over the contents, put on top one ounce of butter broken into small bits; cover with puff paste, and bake for one hour. Probable cost, 2s.
A Victorian layered pie built on salt fish, which does most of the seasoning work. The soak is the part that decides whether the dish is dinner or a salt lick.
- The soak is not optionalHeavily salted cod or ling needs a full overnight soak in cold water, and the water should be changed two or three times. Modern lightly salted or brined fish needs far less; taste a raw sliver after a few hours and stop when it is pleasantly seasoned rather than fierce.
- "Boil it well"Salt fish turns stringy at a rolling boil. Bring the water barely to a shiver and hold it there for 10-15 minutes until the flesh flakes, then drain and cool. It is going into the oven for another hour afterwards.
- A gillA quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, about 140 ml (a scant two-thirds of a US cup). That is all the liquid the pie gets, so the potatoes and onions must be genuinely thin.
- Slice thicknessThe raw potato and onion have one hour to cook through in very little moisture. Aim for about 1/8 in (3 mm) on a mandoline; thicker slices come out crunchy under a perfectly browned lid.
- Made mustard and essence of anchovy"Made" mustard is prepared mustard from the jar, English for period accuracy. Essence of anchovy was a thin bottled anchovy sauce; a teaspoon of anchovy paste loosened with a little water, or Worcestershire sauce, stands in for it.
- KetchupIn Victorian cookery of this date this generally means mushroom or walnut ketchup, a dark salty condiment, rather than the sweet tomato sauce. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; Worcestershire or a dash of soy is the nearest common substitute.
- No added saltThe fish, mustard, anchovy and ketchup between them carry the seasoning. Pepper each layer as directed and leave the salt cellar alone.
- OvenNone is given. Start puff pastry at 425F (220C) for 15-20 minutes to set the lift, then drop to 350F (180C) for the remaining 40 minutes so the potatoes cook without the crust burning. A pie funnel or a slit in the lid keeps the pastry from going soggy underneath.
- YieldThe quantities suit something like a 2-pint pie dish, enough for roughly four to six, though the recipe specifies neither. The stated cost of 2s. reflects salt fish as a cheap larder staple rather than the delicacy it has since become.
Salt fish pies of this kind sit at the intersection of two Victorian household facts: the enormous trade in dried and salted cod, ling and hake that supplied British kitchens year-round before reliable refrigeration, and the religious calendar that still put fish on the table on Fridays and through Lent. The economy of the dish is the point - a preserved fish, potatoes, onions and four eggs stretched under a pastry lid to feed a household for two shillings. The seasoning tells you the date as clearly as anything: made mustard, essence of anchovy and ketchup were the bottled savoury trio of the nineteenth-century store cupboard, and "ketchup" here still means the mushroom or walnut kind, the tomato version not yet having pushed the others off the shelf in Britain. The technique of layering raw potato with cooked fish and letting the whole thing steam under puff paste is common to a broad family of British fish pies, of which this is the thriftiest branch.