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Pies, Christmas
Presents of game are often made at Christmas time by friends in the country to those in London and large towns, and this game will be found to go much further if made into a pie than when roasted or boiled. Partridges, pheasants, woodcock, grouse, and snipes may be thus used. If the birds are small, they may be kept whole; if large, the legs and wings should be cut off, and the breasts larded with bacon. Woodcock and snipes should not be drawn, as the intestines, which should be carefully cleaned, are considered a great delicacy. Make and put among the pieces of meat some good forcemeat balls. They may be made of the livers of the birds pounded with an equal quantity of bacon, some sweet herbs, bread-crumbs, and three or four chopped truffles. Season rather highly. Line the edges of a pie-dish with good crust. Put a beef steak at the bottom of the dish, then the birds with the forcemeat balls, place pieces of butter here and there, and strew over the whole three or four truffles and some fresh mushrooms, both chopped. If the steak is omitted, slices of fat bacon may be laid under and above the meat. Pour a little stock over, cover the dish with a good crust, brush the pie over with the yolk of a beaten egg, and bake in a moderate oven. When the pie is to be eaten hot, make some gravy of a little good melted butter, with the juice of a lemon and a little claret added. This will be an improvement, and will not interfere with the flavour of the game. If it is to be eaten cold, lift off the lid just before serving, and place some cubes of savoury aspic jelly on the top. The time to bake will depend on the size of the pie, but it should not be baked too much.
A raised-crust game pie built from whatever birds arrive in the post. The instructions assume a cook who can joint a pheasant and who has a stockpot going; the vaguest parts are the oven and the timing.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F/175C. A pie this deep is better started at 400F/200C for 15 minutes to set and colour the crust, then dropped to 350F for the remainder.
- Timing, and the warning against overbakingThe hinge of the recipe is "it should not be baked too much." Wild birds have almost no intramuscular fat and go dry and stringy well before a pastry lid looks done. A pie holding a couple of jointed pheasants over a steak wants roughly 1.5 to 2 hours; judge it by the filling reaching 165F/74C rather than by the crust.
- Sourcing the birdsPartridge and pheasant are farmed and sold year-round in Britain and by game dealers in the US. Grouse, woodcock and snipe are wild-shot, and the sale of wild-taken game birds is generally prohibited in the United States, so in practice they reach the kitchen as a gift from someone who shot them, much as the entry describes.
- Undrawn woodcock and snipeLeaving the trail in is still standard practice for these two birds in classical cookery; the gut is short and largely empty. It is a matter of taste, not of technique, and there is no harm in drawing them if the idea does not appeal. The gizzard should come out either way.
- "Larded with bacon"Threading strips of fat through the breast with a larding needle is now rare. Laying thin streaky bacon or thin sheets of pork back fat over the breasts, or the bacon-under-and-over method the recipe offers as an alternative, does the same job.
- Beef steak at the bottomNot a garnish. A slab of chuck or skirt underneath renders and enriches the gravy while shielding the birds from the base heat. It emerges well cooked and is usually eaten as part of the pie.
- Truffles and mushroomsThe truffles here would most often have been preserved (tinned or bottled) black truffle, relatively cheaper then than now. A tablespoon of chopped preserved truffle plus a handful of chestnut or field mushrooms carries the same intent; sliced dried ceps, soaked, are closer in flavour than plain buttons.
- Aspic for the cold versionSavoury aspic here is clarified game or veal stock set with its own gelatine, or with added leaf gelatine at about 1.5 to 2 percent by weight of liquid. Chill it separately, cube it, and add it only at the moment of serving.
- YieldA pie made with two pheasants or four partridges over a pound of steak serves six to eight, hot with the lemon-and-claret butter or cold as part of a cold table.
The point being taught is economy: a brace of birds that would make a thin dinner roasted will feed a household when stretched with steak, forcemeat and crust. That framing is a good picture of late Victorian food logistics, when the railways meant that shooting-party surplus from the country genuinely did turn up on London doorsteps in December, and a cook had to deal with mixed, unpredictable game of varying ages. The cold game pie set with aspic was a fixture of the Christmas and New Year sideboard, where it could be cut at over several days, and the practice of leaving woodcock and snipe undrawn is an older gastronomic convention that Victorian writers repeated with some pride. The lemon and claret gravy reflects a taste for a sharp, wine-lifted sauce with dark game meat rather than the redcurrant sweetness more common today.