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Leeks, Flemish
Rub half a pound of fresh butter into a pound of flour; add half a tea-spoonful of salt, the yolks of two eggs, and three-quarters of a pint of water. Mix thoroughly. Divide this pastry into four parts, and roll these out into rounds about six inches in diameter. Have ready a dozen leeks prepared as follows. Wash them in two or three waters, trim off the roots and the outer leaves, strew a table-spoonful of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, and half a grated nutmeg over them, and pour over them half a pint of cream. Let them soak for half an hour. Put the rounds of pastry on a baking-dish; fill each one with the leeks, draw up the sides to the centre, fasten them securely together, and bake in a good oven. Time to bake, half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. 3d. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
A rich egg-yolk pastry folded around cream-soaked leeks — closer to a rustic galette than anything the Victorians would have called a pie. Two things in the original need attention before it will work: the leeks and the salt.
- Cook the leeks firstA dozen raw leeks will not soften in thirty minutes inside a sealed pastry case; they steam, weep and stay squeaky. Slice them into rounds or lengths, sweat them in butter until limp, then cool them before they meet the cream and the pastry.
- The salt is far too muchThe salt is heavy -- A tablespoon of salt over a dozen leeks, on top of the half-teaspoon in the pastry, is more than most modern palates will want. A teaspoon over the leeks is ample, and half the grated nutmeg specified is plenty for four parcels.
- "A good oven"The book does not define the term; a brisk oven, about 425F/220C, is a reasonable working equivalent. Half an hour at that heat will colour and set the pastry; if it browns before the base is cooked, drop to 375F/190C for the last ten minutes.
- Pastry proportionsHalf a pound butter to a pound of flour is a standard shortcrust ratio, but three-quarters of a pint of water (15 fl oz) is a great deal of liquid for that quantity — start with about a third of it, add the yolks, and stop as soon as the dough coheres. The full amount will give you paste, not pastry.
- Rounds and fillingSix-inch rounds will not hold three whole leeks each. Cut the leeks into 1-inch pieces, mound them in the centre, leave a good inch clear at the edge, and pleat the sides up and pinch them shut. A little escaping cream is expected.
- Draining the creamLift the leeks out of the soaking cream and spoon only two or three tablespoons of it into each parcel. Pouring in all half a pint guarantees a leak and a sodden base.
- Baking dishUse a heavy baking sheet lined with parchment rather than a dish with sides — the parcels want dry heat underneath, not a moat of cream.
- YieldFour parcels, which the book calls enough for six; realistically it is four generous servings, or six if the parcels are cut and served as part of a larger meal. The probable cost of 2s 3d reflects the cream and butter.
Leeks have long carried a reputation as a poor man's vegetable, and the Flemish and northern French treatment — leeks bound in cream and enclosed in pastry — belongs to the same family as the modern flamiche aux poireaux, still a speciality of Picardy and the Belgian border country. The name in Cassell's is doing the work that "Flemish" or "à la flamande" often did in Victorian cookery books: signalling butter, cream and a Low Countries frugality with vegetables rather than any documented regional recipe. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in the late nineteenth century for middle-class English households, ran to several thousand entries arranged alphabetically, and it habitually gave a probable cost and a number of persons served. That the leeks are enriched with half a pint of cream, rather than merely boiled and buttered as many English recipes of the period would have them, is the point of the dish.