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Game Pie, English
The great point to be attended to in this dish is to use venison that has been well kept. The best end of the neck is what should be taken. Trim and rub it with mace, nutmeg, cayenne, and salt. Boil down the trimmings of venison and the inferior joints of a hare to make gravy. Take the back and thighs of the hare, and after boning them, fill with stuffing, using shallot and the raw liver of the hare minced up in the forcemeat. Line a dish with short crust, put in the venison and hare, filling up every space with forcemeat. Add a little of the gravy, put on the cover, ornament the top, and bake in a hot oven. When venison is not liked, substitute the prime joints of another hare. Time, about two hours and a half to bake.
A Victorian game pie built from two animals at once, with almost no quantities given. The instructions assume a cook who can bone a hare and judge seasoning by eye, so the useful work here is filling in the numbers.
- "Well kept" venisonThis means hung — traditionally a week or more in a cool larder, to slacken the muscle and deepen the flavour. Butcher's venison sold today has already been aged under refrigeration; buy it hung and use it within its date rather than attempting to age it further at home.
- Best end of the neckThe rack, the rib section behind the shoulder. Boned out it gives a long, tender eye of meat. Venison loin or boned shoulder both work; shoulder wants slower cooking, which this long bake gives it anyway.
- A hot oven425-450F. At that heat for two and a half hours the crust will be black, so start hot for 20-30 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 325-350F for the rest. Cover the top with foil once it has coloured.
- Hare, and what to do without oneHare is sold by game dealers in season and occasionally frozen year-round; a whole one is usually somewhere between 5 and 8 lb, depending on the animal. Rabbit is the usual stand-in, though it is much milder and drier — add extra fat to the forcemeat if you use it. The raw liver called for goes into the stuffing uncooked and cooks through in the pie.
- Seasoning, unmeasuredFor roughly 3 lb of meat, start with 1 tsp salt, half a teaspoon of ground mace, a quarter teaspoon of grated nutmeg and a good pinch of cayenne. Game takes spice well, but mace dominates quickly.
- The gravySimmer the venison trimmings and hare forequarters with an onion, carrot and a few peppercorns for two to three hours and reduce hard. The recipe puts only a little into the pie before baking and says nothing about the rest; if you want a jellied pie, the usual practice is to pour the remaining stock in through a vent hole after baking, while both pie and stock are still warm, so it sets as it cools.
- Short crust for a two-hour bakeThe recipe calls for short crust in a lined dish; keep the pastry on the plainer side, around half the weight of fat to flour, rather than a rich, high-fat modern pastry. A hot-water crust is an option if you want the pie to stand and slice cold, though that is a departure from the dish as written. Cut a steam vent in the lid before it goes in.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no dish size or quantities, so yield depends entirely on the dish you use. Game pies of this kind were often served cold, and this one is at its best the day after baking, once any jellied stock has set.
Game pie sat at the heart of English country-house cookery. The logic of combining venison and hare is thrift as much as flavour: the neck and the prime hare joints go into the pie, while the trimmings, the shoulders and the inferior joints are boiled down for the gravy that jellies the whole thing together, so nothing from either carcass is wasted. Pies of this kind were built for the cold table and a day or two's keeping, which is why the jelly matters so much. The instruction to hang the venison reflects a period when game arrived at the kitchen door whole and in feather or fur, and the cook, not a supplier, decided when it was ready.