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Game Pie (hunting)
Make a stiff short crust for raised pie (see RAISED PIE); bake in a moderate oven. Cut into neat and rather small joints, one turkey, two pheasants, two partridges, two woodcocks, half a small hare, one grouse, one snipe, and one large ox-tongue. Stew them gently till tender, season rather highly, put them into the crust, pour over them a little of the gravy in which they were stewed, and strew on the top some finely-chopped stewed mushrooms. Put on the lid, and warm the pie in a moderate oven when wanted. Time, three or four hours to prepare.
This is a banquet-scale raised pie built for a shooting party, not a weeknight dish. Everything is cooked before it goes into the pastry, so the pie itself is only ever warmed through.
- The hinge: the crust is baked emptyThe recipe calls for a "stiff short crust for raised pie", baked before it is filled, and the cooked meats are packed in afterwards. (Raised pies of the period were commonly made with a hot-water paste, but this text does not say so.) The method keeps the pastry standing while the game is cooked separately.
- Oven temperaturesA "moderate oven" is usually taken to be somewhere around 350F/180C, though the book gives no figures. A raised crust of this size will want longer than a tart — bake until the walls are firm and dry. The final reheat needs only to warm the pie through, covered loosely if the pastry is already coloured.
- Scale and yieldA turkey, two pheasants, two partridges, two woodcocks, half a hare, a grouse, a snipe and a whole ox tongue is on the order of 20-30 lb of meat. This fed a large party. Quarter the list, or work with a single pheasant, a hare leg and half a cooked tongue, if you want something a domestic oven can hold.
- Sourcing the birdsWoodcock, snipe and grouse are not generally available for sale in the United States: wild game birds may be hunted in season but their sale is restricted under federal migratory-bird law and state game law. Farmed quail, squab and guinea fowl are the practical substitutes; farmed pheasant and rabbit are widely available. In Britain and Ireland these birds are sold in season by game dealers.
- Ox tongueA whole tongue needs simmering for three to four hours until a skewer slides in easily, then the skin peeled off while hot. Ready-cooked salt tongue from a butcher does the same job. If you use a salted tongue, its saltiness counts towards the seasoning of the pie, so taste before adding more.
- Small joints, and bones"Neat and rather small joints" means pieces that will slice cleanly through a cold pie. Bone out the small birds and the hare rather than leaving splinters in the filling; keep the bones for the stewing liquid.
- The gravy sets to jellyOnly "a little" of the stewing liquid goes in — enough to moisten, not to make soup, or the crust will soften from the inside. A well-reduced game stock, rich in bone gelatine, will set firm if the pie is allowed to go cold.
- Seasoning "rather highly"The recipe says to season rather highly. Mace, allspice, black pepper, thyme and a good deal of salt are the period register; season the filling until it is slightly assertive, and more so if any of it will be eaten cold, since cold food tastes flatter.
- TimingThe recipe allows "three or four hours to prepare", which will not stretch to cooking a whole tongue as well. Spread the work: cook the meats and the tongue, cool them, then fill the pie, and warm it in a moderate oven when it is wanted.
Raised game pies of this kind belong to the English shooting season, when a single day's bag arrived in the kitchen as a mixed lot of birds too various to cook separately. The cook's answer was to stew everything down, pack it into a standing hot-water crust and serve it in slices — portable, keepable, and impressive on a sideboard. The technique matters more than any single dish: pastry as a container, cooked meat set in reduced stock, food designed to be carried and eaten away from a formal table. The ox-tongue is there for structure and colour, giving pink against the dark game when the pie is cut, and salted tongue was a standard larder item in Victorian households. Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, hunting country, is generally credited with making the raised pie a commercial article; the game version was the grander relation of the pork pie sold there.