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Pheasant Pie
Take six ounces of the cushion of veal, free it carefully from skin and gristle, and mince it finely. Mix with it six ounces of fat bacon also finely minced, six ounces of finely-grated bread-crumbs, three ounces of chopped beef-suet, and one ounce of grated lean ham. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, season rather highly with pepper, salt, and grated nutmeg, and bind the forcemeat together with yolk of egg. The addition of three or four chopped mushrooms will be an improvement. Pluck and clean a well-hung pheasant, and divide it in two lengthwise. Bone the bird carefully, and fry the halves in hot fat until they are lightly browned. Drain them well, and put about half the forcemeat into them, then put them close together in their original position. Line a pie-mould, or form a case, according to the directions already given (see PASTE FOR RAISED PIES.) Lay slices of fat bacon at the bottom, and spread half of the remaining forcemeat on them. Put in the pheasant, the remainder of the forcemeat, and a slice of fat bacon over all. Lay on the lid, make a hole in the centre, and bake in a brisk oven. If there is any danger of the pie burning, lay a paper upon it. In order to ascertain when it is done enough, push a trussing-needle through the hole in the centre; if it penetrates easily, the pie is sufficiently cooked. This pie, if preferred, may be baked in a dish, and the pheasant may be jointed before it is put in. Half an hour after it is taken out of the oven pour into it, through the hole in the centre, a quarter of a pint of strong gravy made from the liver. Time to bake, two hours, or more. Probable cost, 6s. Sufficient for six or eight persons. To make an effective table dish, save the skin and plumage of the bird, keep the head crest in its proper position by means of a piece of wire, and the tail spread out. Let the pie be quite cold, and bring it up to table with the skin and plumage placed upon the top.
A raised game pie of the full Victorian sort: hot-water crust, a veal-and-bacon forcemeat, a boned pheasant, and a jellied gravy poured in after baking. Nothing here is beyond a modern cook, but several of the terms and the finishing steps need translating.
- The hinge: the gravy must setThe quarter-pint of "strong gravy" poured in half an hour after baking fills the gap left as the meat shrinks, and, since the pie is eaten cold, it is meant to set to a jelly as the pie cools. Make it from well-reduced game or veal stock with the liver, seasoned assertively. A thin gravy will soak the crust instead of setting.
- Cushion of vealThe inner muscle of the leg, sold today as veal topside or leg round. Any lean veal or, failing that, lean pork shoulder will mince to the same texture; the fat bacon and suet are doing the work of keeping it moist.
- A brisk ovenA hot oven; the book gives no figure, but roughly 400-425F is the usual modern reading, with the heat dropped once the crust has coloured over so long a bake. The paper laid over the top is a foil tent by another name, and the recipe calls for it only if the pie looks like burning.
- Testing with a trussing needleA thin skewer through the central hole tells you the meat is tender, not that it is safe. Use a probe thermometer at the centre of the forcemeat and look for 165F; a boned pheasant with some twenty-two ounces of raw forcemeat around and inside it is a dense mass and will take the full two hours or more.
- Boning and the shotSplit the bird lengthwise as directed and lift the carcass out of each half with a small knife, keeping the skin intact so the halves will hold the stuffing. Shot birds carry lead pellets; run your fingers over the breast meat before it goes in, and be careful of splintered bone along the ribs.
- A well-hung pheasantVictorian game was hung feathered and ungutted for a week or more in a cool larder to develop flavour and slacken the muscle. Birds bought today are hung briefly, if at all, and are correspondingly milder and firmer; there is no need to try to reproduce the older practice, and no cold larder in a modern house to do it in.
- The pasteThe cross-reference is to hot-water crust made with lard and boiling water, moulded while warm around a form or in a hinged raised-pie mould. It is structural pastry, thicker and less rich than shortcrust, and it is what allows the pie to be turned out and served cold in slices.
- The plumage garnishSetting the wired head and spread tail on the finished pie was standard buffet dressing and is best left in the past. Raw skin and feathers carry bacteria and mites onto food that will not be cooked again; if you want the effect, mount the plumage on a separate stand beside the dish.
- Yield and costSix to eight portions, as stated. The 6s. is the price in shillings at the time of writing, when a pheasant was a luxury rather than a supermarket line.
Raised pies of this kind stand at the point where English cookery met French charcuterie: a boned game bird, a fine veal-and-bacon forcemeat, and a jelly poured through the vent are the same principles as a pâté en croûte, but built in the sturdier hot-water crust that English bakers had used since the medieval "coffin". The pie was eaten cold -- carried whole to a sideboard or a shooting luncheon, cut in slices, and prized as much for its appearance as its flavour. The dressing of the finished pie in the bird's own head and tail belongs to the Victorian taste for making a dish declare what it was made from, a habit generally traced to the presentation cookery of Carême and his followers and carried on in England through Francatelli and Soyer. It also reflects a household economy in which game arrived feathered and whole from an estate or a poulterer.