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Parsley Pie
Lay a fowl, or a few bones of the scrag of veal, in a dish. Scald in milk a colanderful of picked parsley; season it, and add it to the fowl or meat, with a tea-cupful of any sort of good broth or stock. Bake in the oven, and just before lifting add a mixture of a quarter of a pint of scalded cream, a piece of butter the size of a walnut, and a tea-spoonful of flour. Shake it round, to mix with the gravy already in the vessel.
A late-Victorian herb pie in its plainest form: no pastry is mentioned, so this is really a covered bake finished with cream. The one thing to get right is the liaison at the end — flour dropped loose into hot cream will lump, so work it into the butter first.
- The finishing mixtureMash the teaspoon of flour into the softened butter to make a paste (beurre manié), then stir that into the scalded cream and add it off the boil, shaking rather than stirring so the gravy emulsifies. Added dry, the flour will seize into specks that no amount of shaking will disperse.
- "A fowl"A Victorian fowl is a mature laying hen — tough, gelatinous, and built for two hours of moist heat. A 4–5 lb chicken stands in, jointed rather than whole so it cooks evenly, and it needs to reach 165F/74C at the thigh.
- Scrag of vealThe scrag is the thin end of the neck, sold now as veal neck or stewing veal if at all. Lamb or mutton neck behaves the same way and is far easier to buy.
- A colanderful of parsleyGenuinely imprecise, but the intent is a large quantity — think 4 to 6 oz of picked leaves, which wilts down to a modest amount. Flat-leaf has more flavour; curly holds its texture better in the scald.
- Scalding the parsleyDropping the leaves into hot milk softens the stalky bite and sets the green colour before baking. Do not let the milk boil hard or it will catch and the parsley will turn drab.
- Old measuresA quarter of a pint of cream is 5 fl oz in imperial, a little over half a US cup. A tea-cupful of stock is roughly 5 to 6 fl oz. Butter the size of a walnut is usually reckoned at about 1 to 2 tablespoons, 15-30 g.
- OvenThe recipe says only "bake in the oven": no temperature, no time, and no lid specified. A slow oven, around 325F, suits it; reckon roughly an hour and a half to two hours for jointed chicken, longer for veal neck. The dish should barely simmer, not roast.
- YieldProbably enough for four as a main course with potatoes. It is soupier than the word "pie" suggests; the recipe gives no crust whatever, so any pastry lid is an addition of your own.
Parsley pie belongs to the family of English herb pies associated with the West Country, where Devon and Cornish cooks made pasties and pies filled with green stuff -- parsley, nettles, spinach beet, leeks -- bound with cream or egg and often stretched with a little meat or bacon. No crust appears in this version at all: what is being shown is the technique of scalding herbs to tame them and finishing a bake with cream, butter and a pinch of flour. The reliance on scrag and boiling fowl is characteristic of the period, when the cheap, gelatinous cuts that made good gravy were the ones a thrifty household was likely to cook, and a great heap of parsley cost next to nothing from the kitchen garden.