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Godiveau Raised Pie
A good dish may be made by filling a raised pie with balls made of Godiveau forcemeat (see the preceding recipe), mixed with any savoury ragout, and pouring over the whole a rich sauce.
This is a serving suggestion rather than a worked recipe — Cassell's assumes you have already read the godiveau entry and know how to raise a pie crust. The two things it leaves unsaid are the ones that decide whether it works: the forcemeat balls must be poached before they go in, and the pastry must be a hot-water crust stiff enough to stand.
- What godiveau isA fine veal forcemeat, classically lean veal pounded with an equal weight of beef suet or kidney fat, bound with egg and then let down with iced water or cream until light. Modern equivalent: veal (or chicken) pounded or processed cold with fat and egg, kept thoroughly chilled throughout or it will break.
- Poach the balls firstGodiveau balls are shaped with wet hands and simmered gently in salted water or light stock for 8-10 minutes until they float and are firm, then drained and cooled. The recipe does not specify this, but poaching first keeps the balls distinct in the pie rather than letting them leach into the filling.
- "Raised pie" means hot-water crustNot shortcrust and not puff. Flour worked with boiling water and lard, kneaded warm and moulded by hand around a jam jar or in a hinged mould. It must be shaped while hot and pliable; once it cools it cracks.
- Oven heatBake a hand-raised pie at 400-425F for the first 20-30 minutes to set the walls, then drop to 350F for the remainder — roughly 1 to 1 1/4 hours for a pie of 8-9 inches.
- The ragoutAny well-reduced brown or white stew of the period — mushrooms, sweetbreads, cockscombs, tongue, or simply braised veal and mushrooms. Cut everything to the size of the forcemeat balls and cool it before filling, and keep it on the dry side; a wet ragout will soften the crust from within.
- The sauce goes in at the endThe sauce -- The recipe says only that a rich sauce is poured over the whole; it does not say when. Adding it hot after baking, through the vent hole (a good demi-glace, sauce allemande or reduced velouté), avoids filling the case with liquid before it goes in the oven.
- YieldA pie built in a 7-8 inch mould with about 1 1/2 lb of forcemeat and a pint of ragout will serve six to eight as a main course.
Godiveau is one of the old French forcemeats, long established in French kitchen usage, and distinguished from ordinary quenelle mixtures by the use of suet or kidney fat rather than a bread panada, and by the iced water beaten in at the end — godiveau à la glace. Cassell's gives this note not as a dish so much as a demonstration: once a cook can make a forcemeat and raise a crust, the two combine with whatever ragout the larder offers. That combination of a standing pastry case, poached forcemeat and a separately made sauce poured in at table is characteristic of late-Victorian professional cookery in England, which took French technique and rehoused it in the very English form of the hand-raised pie.