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PIES, MEAT, JELLY FOR (economical and quickly made)
Put into a cup an ounce of gelatine with as much cold water as will cover it, and let it soak for half an hour. Put a pint and a half of good stock, quite free from fat, into a stewpan, with a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, five or six shallots, half a blade of mace, six cloves, an onion, and a little pepper and salt. Bring the stock gently to the boil; cool it, stir the gelatine into it, and continue stirring until it is dissolved. Let the stock cool; mix with it the whites and crushed shells of two eggs which have been beaten up with a cupful of cold water. Stir them into the stock, whisk all together until the liquid is on the point of boiling, then draw the saucepan to the side of the fire, and let the contents simmer gently for ten minutes. Pass the gravy through a jelly-bag, and it will be fit for use. If the stock is already nicely flavoured, the flavouring ingredients need not be added. A dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar and half a glassful of sherry may be stirred in, with the whites of the eggs, if approved. The jelly will become stiff more quickly if it is poured out on a large dish. Time, one hour to make. Probable cost, exclusive of stock, 1s. Sufficient for a quart of jelly. PIES, PASTE FOR. (See PASTE FOR COMMON PIES, PASTE FOR RAISED PIES, ETC.) PIG, DIAGRAM OF, FOR BACON. (See the illustration accompanying the article BACON, TO CUT UP A PIG FOR.)
This is aspic — savoury jelly poured into a raised pie through the hole in the lid once the pie has cooled, filling the gap left as the meat shrinks. The clarification is the whole exercise, and it lives or dies on heat control.
- Do not boil after the egg whites go inWhisk while the stock heats, but the moment it trembles at the boil stop whisking and stop stirring. The whites must knit into a floating raft that traps the cloud; a rolling boil shreds it and you end up with murky stock full of albumen threads.
- The stock must be cool first"Let the stock cool" means well below hand-hot before the whites go in. Add them to hot stock and they set in ribbons instead of drawing the sediment upward.
- Gelatine quantitiesAn ounce is 28 g, roughly four ¼-oz envelopes of modern powdered gelatine, to a pint and a half imperial (30 fl oz, about 850 ml or 3½ US cups). That is a firm, sliceable set suited to a pie; for a jelly to be eaten with a spoon it would be too stiff. Sheet gelatine is sold by bloom strength — weigh rather than count sheets.
- Blooming, then dissolvingSoaking in cold water for half an hour is blooming, and it still matters with sheet gelatine. Powder can be sprinkled over cold water and left ten minutes. Stir into stock that is hot but well off the boil; prolonged boiling weakens the set.
- Half a blade of maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg; a blade is one dried piece. Substitute a scant ⅛ teaspoon of ground mace, or a small grating of nutmeg, and remember it will pass through the jelly bag rather than being fished out.
- The jelly-bagA double layer of damp muslin or cheesecloth in a sieve does the same job. Ladle the liquid through gently, taking the raft last, and never press or squeeze — pressure pushes the sediment straight through.
- Cooling and settingPouring onto a large dish speeds the set, as the recipe says, but for a pie you want the jelly still liquid and only just cool when it goes in. If it sets in the jug, warm it gently until pourable again.
- Yield and keepingAbout a quart, as the recipe states. It is a fresh meat stock with no preservative: keep it refrigerated, use within two or three days, and chill the finished pie.
- The optional flavouringsThe recipe adds the dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar and half-glass of sherry with the whites of the eggs, before clarification, rather than after the jelly is passed through the bag.
Raised pies — pork, veal and ham, game — were built to be eaten cold, and the jelly is structural rather than decorative: the meat shrinks as it bakes, and unfilled space means air, spoilage and a collapsed crust. Older English cookery got that jelly from the pie itself, by packing in trotters, calf's foot or knuckle whose collagen set on cooling. What makes this version "economical and quickly made" is presumably the commercial gelatine it calls for, of the kind said to have become available from British firms around the middle of the nineteenth century, which let a cook stiffen any well-flavoured stock to order instead of boiling feet for hours. The egg-white raft is the older technique, the same one used for consommé and for the calf's-foot jellies of invalid cookery, and Cassell's says only to draw the pan to the side of the fire.</p>