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Moor Game Pie
Season the birds highly with cayenne, black pepper, and salt. Any other seasoning will rob them of their native flavour. They may be divided or not, according to size. Small birds are best whole. Boil down any trimmings for gravy. Put this, with some good beef gravy, into a pie-dish, and lay in the birds with bits of butter over them; or a rump-steak, well seasoned, may be laid in the bottom of the pie-dish, with the gravy from the trimmings. Cover with a puff-paste and bake, but do not overdress it. If the pie is to be eaten hot, a little melted butter, mixed with a glassful of claret, and the juice from a lemon may be poured into it through a funnel; but for a cold pie this is not necessary. Time, three-quarters to one hour to bake. Probable cost, exclusive of fowl, 2s.
A Victorian game pie in the plainest style: birds, gravy, butter, pastry. The instructions assume you know your bird and your oven, so the useful work is in filling those gaps.
- What moor game is"Moor game" is red grouse, the moorland bird of northern Britain, sold in the UK in season from 12 August. Outside Britain the nearest substitutes are other small dark-fleshed game birds - partridge, squab, or quail - or you can build the pie from bone-in pheasant or duck legs. Reckon on roughly one bird per person; three or four birds will fill a large pie dish.
- Do not overdress itThis is the hinge of the recipe: "dress" here means cook. Grouse breast is lean and turns dry and liverish once it goes past medium, so keep the total oven time at the short end - the pastry lid is what needs the heat, not the meat. Note that the recipe leaves jointing optional and prefers small birds whole.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature. For puff paste a hot start works best: about 425F for 20 minutes to lift and set the pastry, then down to 350F for the remainder. The recipe's own range is three-quarters to one hour; take the shorter end for a pie of small whole birds.
- Beef gravyNot a thickened brown sauce but a strong unthickened beef stock, reduced. Simmer the birds' necks, backs and giblets in good beef stock for an hour, strain, and reduce until it coats a spoon lightly. Add only enough to come a third of the way up the meat, or the pastry will sit on liquid and go soft underneath.
- The rump-steak layerA thin slice of well-seasoned beef laid in the bottom is a common device in Victorian game and pigeon pies - it gives body and gelatine and keeps the birds off the base. Braising steak serves better than a prime cut here; it has an hour in the dish.
- A glassful of claretA wine glass of the period is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz, so about a quarter cup of dry red wine, warmed with the melted butter and lemon juice and poured through a funnel in the pastry after baking. Warm it first; cold liquid into a hot pie dulls the crust and the flavour.
- Cayenne with a light handThe recipe wants the birds seasoned "highly," but cayenne varies a great deal in heat from jar to jar. Start with a scant quarter teaspoon for four birds and taste the gravy, not the raw seasoning.
- Serving coldThe note that wine and butter are unnecessary for a cold pie assumes a well-reduced, gelatinous gravy that sets to jelly. If your stock does not set on its own, a little leaf gelatine dissolved in the hot gravy before it goes in gives the same effect.
Grouse pie belongs to the shooting-season cookery of nineteenth-century Britain, when the opening of the moors on 12 August sent birds south by rail to London game dealers and clubs within a day or so of being shot. The insistence that no seasoning beyond cayenne, pepper and salt be used says a good deal about how grouse was valued: its flavour was credited to the heather the birds fed on, and to smother it with herbs or spice was thought a waste of an expensive bird. The cost is given "exclusive of fowl" because the price of game varied and was left to the reader. The funnel poured through the pastry lid is a familiar Victorian device, used also for raised pork pies, on the principle that liquid added after baking does not sodden the crust.