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Pork Pies, Pastry For
Put a quarter of a pound of finely-shredded beef suet--or five ounces of lard, or a quarter of a pound of mutton suet--and an ounce of fresh butter into a saucepan with half a pint of boiling water and a pinch of salt. Stir the mixture until the fat is dissolved, and pour it boiling hot into a pound and a half of flour. Knead well to a stiff paste, and add a little more warm water if required. Shape the dough, and get it into the oven while it is warm. If the pie is to be baked in a mould, lay a piece of the proper shape at the bottom. Press long pieces into the sides, and fasten these to the top and the bottom with white of egg. If a mould is not to be used, cut off as much pastry as will make the cover, and wrap it in a cloth to keep it warm. Mould the rest with both hands into the shape of a cone, and make the sides smooth and firm. Press the top down with the knuckles of the right hand, and with the left press the outside closely to keep it firm and smooth. Be careful that the walls are equally thick in every part. Fill the pie, put on the cover, pinch the edges, fasten securely with white of egg, ornament the outside in any way that may suit the fancy, brush over with yolk of egg, and bake in a slow oven if the pie be large, in a quicker one if it be small.
This is hot water crust — the sturdy, hand-raised pastry that holds a pork pie upright without a tin. The whole method hinges on temperature: the paste must be worked and shaped while genuinely warm, because once the fat sets the dough cracks instead of stretching.
- Work fast, work warmKnead the moment the boiling fat and water hit the flour, and shape while the dough is still comfortably hot to the hand. Anything you are not using immediately (the lid, for instance) goes under a cloth or an inverted bowl to hold its heat.
- MeasurementsAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml); a US half pint of 8 oz will give a noticeably drier paste, so add the extra warm water the recipe allows. A pound and a half of flour is roughly 5 1/2 cups; the recipe does not specify a type, and plain white flour will serve, though some hand-raised crusts are made with stronger flour.
- The fatsLard is the usual choice for pork pies and is forgiving at the 5 oz given, though this recipe lists beef suet first. Beef or mutton suet gives a firmer, more strongly flavoured crust; if using packaged shredded suet rather than fresh butcher's suet, expect the flour coating in it to absorb a little more liquid.
- Oven temperaturesA slow oven is about 300-325F (150-160C), a quicker one 400-425F (200-220C). As the recipe says, a large raised pie wants the lower setting and a long bake, a small one the higher heat and a much shorter time; actual timings depend on the size and filling.
- Raising by handThe cone shaped with both hands is the traditional way of raising a pie without a mould. It is easier with a floured jam jar or a straight-sided tin as a former: mould the paste up the outside, let it firm for a few minutes, then slip the former out. Even wall thickness matters more than a neat exterior, since a thin patch will burst under the weight of the filling.
- Egg as glue and glazeWhite of egg is used here purely as an adhesive for the seams; yolk thinned with a little water is the glaze. Brush the glaze on before baking and again halfway through for a deeper colour.
- The filling still needs a thermometerThis is pastry for a raised pie filled with raw pork, so whatever filling you use the centre must reach 160F/71C. Check with a probe rather than trusting the pastry's colour.
- YieldBy rough estimate this quantity of paste should line and cover one large pie of about 8 inches, or six to eight individual pies, taking something in the order of 2 to 2 1/2 lb of filling. The recipe itself gives no yield.
Hot water crust is one of the oldest surviving English pastries still made in something close to its medieval form, when a pie's "coffyn" was a container first and a food second — a thick, tough case that sealed meat against air and could travel. By the time Cassell's was compiled in the late nineteenth century the crust was expected to be eaten, but the structural logic remained: boiling water and melted fat gelatinise some of the starch and give a paste that is plastic when warm and rigid when cool, which is why it can be raised freehand into standing walls. The entry is headed alphabetically, "Pork Pies, Pastry For" — and the pork pie itself, associated above all with Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, was by then a commercial product that a good household cook was still expected to be able to make herself.