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Grouse Pie
Line the edges of a pie-dish with a good crust. Put a pound of rumpsteak, which has been cut into convenient-sized pieces, at the bottom, and lay a couple of grouse on these. If the birds are large, they should be cut into joints; if small, they may be put in whole, or in halves. Season rather highly with salt, cayenne, and black pepper, and pour a quarter of a pint of nicely-flavoured broth over the grouse. Cover with a good crust, and bake in a moderate oven. If the pie is to be eaten hot, a little more boiling gravy, to which has been added a table-spoonful of lemon-juice, and two of claret, may be poured in before serving. Time to bake, an hour, or rather less. Probable cost of grouse, variable, from 2s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. a brace. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A late-Victorian raised-flavour game pie: no bottom crust, only a pastry rim and a lid, with steak underneath acting as both ballast and gravy. A few conversions and one judgement call about the birds are all it needs.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F/180C. If the pastry is puff or rough puff, start at 425F/220C for 15 minutes to set and lift it, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- A quarter of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. Enough to keep the meat moist without turning the underside of the lid to paste.
- "Line the edges"There is no base pastry. A strip of pastry is pressed around the wetted rim of the dish, the filling goes in, and the lid is sealed to that strip. The steak juices become the gravy rather than soaking into a bottom crust.
- A brace of grouseTwo birds, the usual unit of game sale. Red grouse dress out small, commonly somewhere around 12-14 oz each; two of them plus a pound of steak will stretch to six people in a pie, if not eight by modern appetites.
- Which birds, and jointing themAn hour at 350F is long for young grouse breast, which is at its best barely pink. This pie suits older or late-season birds, and it is worth jointing even small ones so the breast pieces sit on top and the legs go down into the liquid.
- RumpsteakNot a searing steak here but braising material cut into thumb-sized pieces. Chuck or skirt behaves better over an hour; if you use rump, cut it thick so it does not go dry and grey.
- Cayenne and black pepper"Season rather highly" suits a pie eaten cold, where fat and jelly mute the seasoning; the recipe's phrasing "if the pie is to be eaten hot" suggests cold service was at least as likely. If you plan to eat it hot, you may want to be a little more restrained.
- The finishing gravyThe lemon juice and two spoonfuls of claret go into boiling gravy poured in immediately before serving, as the recipe directs. Add them cold or early and you lose the point, which is a sharp lift against the dark, iron-flavoured meat.
- Prices2s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. a brace tells you grouse were a luxury but a real market commodity, not the specialist order they are now. Any dark game bird, or even a pair of pigeon, will read correctly in this pastry.
Grouse pie belongs to the British shooting calendar: red grouse cannot be taken before 12 August, the "Glorious Twelfth", and the birds that follow are available for a few weeks and then gone, which is exactly the pattern that produces pies. Cassell's puts it among the game entries as one of a family of dish pies that solved two problems at once, stretching two small carcasses to feed eight and rescuing older, tougher birds that would disappoint on the spit. The steak beneath is the older English convention, supplying the fat that lean wild birds lack; the claret and lemon at the end are the same acid-and-wine correction used in hare and venison sauces. That the recipe quotes a price range as wide as 2s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. a brace is a reminder that game reached city cookbooks through a market that swung with the weather on the moors.