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Lancashire Raised Pie
Take about two pounds of whatever meat is preferred (pork is most generally used), cut the lean into thin slices, and season each piece slightly with a little pepper and salt. Take away all the bones, and stew them, with a pint of water, half a small tea-spoonful of salt, and a pinch of pepper, for two hours, then strain the gravy and put it aside for use. It should when cold be a stiff jelly. Shred four ounces of beef suet very finely. Mix half a tea-spoonful of salt with it, and melt it over the fire in half a pint of boiling water. It will take ten or fifteen minutes to melt. Put a pound and a half of flour into a bowl. Pour the boiling fat and water into the middle of it, and mix thoroughly, first with a spoon and afterwards with the hands. Knead to a stiff paste, cut off a piece large enough to form the lid of the pie, put the rest on the table and mould it with the hands to the form of a cone. Flatten the sides with the palms of the hands, and, when quite smooth, press down the top of the cone with one hand, and with the other make the sides equally round. Great expedition is necessary, as the excellence of the pie depends to a considerable extent on its being placed in the oven while still warm. Put in the lean meat, strew a little minced fat over each layer, and press it closely until the mould is full. Egg the edges, roll out the cover, and place it on the pie. Make a small hole in the centre, through which the gravy can afterwards be put in. Ornament the pie with leaves of pastry, or in any other way to please the fancy, brush it over with yolk of egg, and bake in a good oven. When the pie is done enough pour a little of the jelly gravy (melted) through the hole in the top. Time to bake, three hours. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A hand-raised hot-water crust pie of the Lancashire type, built without a tin and baked free-standing. The one thing that governs success is temperature: the paste must be worked and shaped while still warm, and in the oven before it cools and cracks.
- Work the paste warmHot-water crust is pliable at around blood heat and brittle once cold. Mould, fill and lid the pie in one continuous run, keeping the reserved lid piece covered in a warm bowl so it does not stiffen before you roll it.
- "A good oven"The book gives no temperatures. For a modern oven a fairly brisk heat, roughly 400F/200C for the first 20-30 minutes to set the walls, then 325-350F/160-180C for the remainder, is a reasonable reading; at a steady high heat the crust will darken long before the meat is done.
- Three hours is for a tall, dense pieThe full time suits a pie of this size packed solid with sliced meat. Cover the top loosely with foil once it has coloured. Cook the pork through; 145F/63C at the centre with a short rest is the modern minimum for whole cuts, and a probe pushed through the steam hole is the easiest way to check.
- SuetThe recipe calls for four ounces of shredded beef suet, which gives a firm crust. Packet shredded suet can be used directly; block suet needs grating. Lard, the fat more usually associated with raised pies, can be substituted in the same quantity.
- MeasuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, so the bone stock starts with 2.5 US cups of water and the paste uses half a pint, about 1.25 US cups. A pound and a half of flour is roughly 5.5 cups of plain flour, weighed if possible.
- The jellyPork bones alone rarely set firm now; add a split trotter or a piece of pork skin to the stockpot to guarantee a stiff jelly. Pour the melted jelly in only when the pie has cooled to lukewarm, or it will run straight out through the pastry seams instead of filling the gaps left by shrinkage.
- FillingSlice the lean thinly across the grain and season each layer as you go, as the recipe directs. The minced fat strewn between layers is not decorative; it is what keeps the pie from drying over three hours.
- ServingSix to eight, as the original says. It cuts most cleanly once cold and the jelly has set, so a night in the refrigerator helps, though the recipe itself does not say whether it was sent to table hot or cold.
Raised pies of this kind belong to a tradition older than the tin-lined pie: the crust was originally a "coffin", a stiff hot-water paste raised by hand around a wooden block or pinched up between the palms, serving as much as a baking vessel and a keeping-case as something to eat. Lancashire, Cheshire and the Midlands all kept versions into the nineteenth century, and the Melton Mowbray pork pie is broadly the same technique surviving under a protected name. The unusual amount of space given to flattening the cone with the palms and to the warning about expedition reflects how much of the dish is shaping skill. The costing of 2s. and the note on portions are typical of the volume, which assumes households buying meat with the bones in, so the bones for the jelly came with the joint.