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Lamb and Currant Pie
Cut about two pounds of the breast of lamb into small, neat pieces. Put them in a pie-dish, and sprinkle over them a dessert-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a table-spoonful of finely-minced parsley, a quarter of a nutmeg, grated, and three table-spoonfuls of picked currants. Beat two eggs thoroughly, mix with them a wine-glassful of sherry, and pour them over the meat. Line the edges of the dish with a good crust, cover with the same, and bake in a moderate oven. A little white wine and sugar should be sent to table with this pie. Time, an hour and a half to bake. Probable cost, 2s. 8d., exclusive of the wine. Sufficient for four or five persons. LAMB (au Bechamel). (See LAMB, LEG OF, STEWED, with BECHAMEL, or WHITE SAUCE.)
A Victorian survival of the old sweet-savoury meat pie, and one that behaves less like a stew under pastry than like a set custard of egg and sherry around the lamb. The seasoning and the liquid are both worth adjusting before you commit.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F/175C. An hour and a half at that heat will cook the lamb through and set the egg; if the crust colours too fast in the first half hour, lay foil loosely over the top.
- The egg is the sauceThere is no stock and no water here. Two beaten eggs and the sherry set into a thin savoury custard around the meat, so avoid a hard oven, which will curdle it and weep liquid into the pastry.
- Wine-glassfulVictorian wine glasses ran small; 2 fl oz (4 tablespoons) is the usual reading, and a sherry glass could be less. Do not push past 1/4 cup or the filling will not set.
- The salt is highA dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons, which is a great deal for two pounds of meat by modern palates, and a teaspoon of pepper is likewise generous. Half of each is closer to current taste.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. "Picked" means gone over by hand for stalks and grit, largely unnecessary with packaged fruit, though a quick rinse and dry does no harm.
- Breast of lambA fatty, bony cut that renders a good deal of grease into a closed pie. Trim hard, or substitute boned shoulder cut in small pieces for a cleaner result; either way two pounds of bone-in breast yields considerably less meat than two pounds of shoulder.
- "Line the edges of the dish"Pastry goes on the rim as a strip to seal to, and then over the top; there is no bottom crust. Cut a vent so the steam from the meat does not lift the lid.
- ServingFour to five people, as stated. The white wine and sugar sent to table were presumably meant to be combined as a sweet accompaniment for the cut pie, which reads oddly now but sits with the currants and nutmeg.
Meat baked with dried fruit, sugar and spice is one of the oldest patterns in English cookery, common in medieval and Tudor pies and still visible in mincemeat, which kept its shredded suet and once kept its meat. By the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled in the later nineteenth century, the savoury-sweet pie seems to have been a residual taste rather than a fashionable one, and recipes like this survive as curiosities alongside pages of French sauces and bechamels, as the cross-reference tacked on the end of this entry suggests. The instruction to send white wine and sugar to table may be the giveaway: it suggests the dish is being finished as a sweet course would be, in the manner of an older service. The costing in shillings and pence, given here as 2s. 8d., was a standard feature of the book, and is often said to have been aimed at a housekeeper working to a weekly budget.