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GIBLET PIE (another way)
Prepare and stew the giblets as in the last recipe. Let them get cold, and put them into a pie-dish, with a chicken, cut into neat joints, and seasoned with pepper, salt, and pounded mace. Cover the whole with a light crust, and bake in a good oven. Before sending the pie to table, mix a small cupful of the gravy in which the giblets were stewed with two table-spoonfuls of mushroom ketchup and a wine-glassful of sherry, and pour it hot into the dish. Time, one hour to bake. Probable cost, 3s. 8d. Sufficient for six persons.
A Victorian raised-crust pie built on two separate cookings: the giblets are stewed and cooled first, then baked under pastry with raw chicken joints. The gravy goes in at the very end, through a hole in the crust.
- The hinge: stew the giblets firstThe instruction to "prepare and stew the giblets as in the last recipe" is not optional. Gizzards, hearts and necks need long, gentle simmering before they are tender; an hour under pastry will not do it. Cool them and reserve the stewing liquid, which becomes the finishing gravy.
- A good ovenA hot one; roughly 400-425F is the usual modern reading, though the book gives no temperature. Start there for about 20 minutes to set and colour the crust, then drop to around 350F for the remainder so the chicken cooks through without the pastry burning. The chicken joints should reach 165F in the thickest part.
- Giblets todaySupermarket birds rarely come with them. Ask a butcher for chicken or turkey gizzards, hearts and necks; livers are usually excluded from giblet pies as they turn bitter and grainy in long stewing. About 1 lb of mixed giblets suits a pie for six.
- Light crustMost likely a puff or rough-puff lid rather than a hot-water raised paste. Use a top crust only, on a deep dish; a vent cut in the centre lets steam escape and gives the finishing gravy somewhere to go, though the recipe does not specify one.
- A wine-glassfulRoughly 2 fl oz in Victorian usage. A "small cupful" of gravy is about 5-6 fl oz. Warm the gravy, ketchup and sherry together before pouring; cold liquid into a hot pie will slacken the underside of the crust.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup. It is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still sold by some British makers; a mixture of mushroom soaking liquor and a little soy or Worcestershire sauce stands in for it reasonably well. It is doing the work of umami and salt, so taste before adding more salt.
- Pounded maceGround mace, the outer covering of nutmeg. A quarter teaspoon for the whole pie is plenty; more and it dominates. Nutmeg is a passable substitute at half the quantity.
- ServingSix portions as stated, but only as part of a larger meal by modern standards. Cut the chicken into small joints so each serving gets meat, giblet and gravy, and serve with something plain and starchy to take the sauce.
Giblet pie belongs to a school of English cookery that treated nothing from a bird as waste. When households bought or raised whole poultry and geese, the neck, gizzard, heart and pinions were a byproduct of every roast, and pies of this kind were one common way of using them; giblet pies appear in English cookery books well before Cassell's and survived in print into the twentieth century. The version here is richer than a purely frugal one, since it adds a whole jointed chicken, sherry and mushroom ketchup. That the book gives a "probable cost" of 3s. 8d. reflects its purpose: Cassell's Dictionary was aimed at households running to a budget, and costings let the kitchen accounts be checked. Goose giblets were a classic choice, and giblet pie is often associated with Michaelmas and Christmas, when geese were killed in numbers.