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Potato Gipsy Pie
Peel and slice thinly as many potatoes as will fill a moderate-sized pie-dish. Put them into it in layers, and over each layer sprinkle a little salt and pepper, and a very small portion of finely-minced onion. Pour half a cupful of water over the whole, and place little pieces of butter here and there on the top; cover with a good crust, and bake in a moderate oven. When the pie is done enough, pour a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup into it, through the hole in the top, before serving it. Time to bake, according to the size of the pie. Probable cost, potatoes, 1d. to 2d. per pound.
A frugal Victorian supper pie: nothing but potato, onion, butter and pastry, with mushroom ketchup poured in at the end to do the work of gravy. It succeeds or fails on how thinly the potatoes are cut.
- Slice thin, pack tightThe half cup of water is all the moisture there is, so the potatoes cook mainly by steaming in their own starch. Cut them 1/8 inch or thinner (a mandoline is ideal) and press the layers down firmly; thick or loosely stacked slices come out chalky in the middle under a sealed crust.
- Moderate ovenUsually read today as somewhere around 350F/180C. The recipe gives no time at all, only "according to the size of the pie"; for a dish about 8 inches across expect somewhere in the region of an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half, covering the pastry loosely with foil if it colours before the filling is soft. Test with a skewer through the vent hole rather than by the look of the crust.
- A moderate-sized pie-dishProbably something in the range of 1 1/2 to 2 pints, which would take roughly 2 lb of peeled potatoes and serve about four as a main course with a green vegetable, or six as a side. The recipe itself gives no quantity.
- Waxy potatoesChoose a waxy or all-purpose variety that holds its shape in slices. Floury bakers collapse into a dry mash and absorb the small amount of liquid immediately.
- Butter"Little pieces here and there" means about 1 to 1 1/2 oz (30-40 g) dotted over the top layer. With no stock or cream in the dish, the butter is the only richness, so do not skimp.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup. Victorian mushroom ketchup was a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquor, closest today to mushroom soy sauce or a commercial mushroom ketchup. Worcestershire sauce thinned with water is sometimes suggested, but it is a noticeably different, more acid and fish-based seasoning rather than a true equivalent. Add the ketchup as the recipe directs, through the hole in the top before serving, and let the pie stand a few minutes so it spreads.
- The crust and its ventThe recipe says only "a good crust", leaving the choice open; a plain shortcrust or a suet paste, rolled fairly thin, both suit it. Cut a hole in the centre, since the recipe assumes one is there both to let steam out and to take the ketchup afterwards.
- Season as you buildSalt and pepper go between every layer, not on top. A sealed potato pie seasoned only at the surface tastes flat; allow about 1/2 teaspoon of salt per pound of potato spread through the dish.
Dishes called "gipsy" in nineteenth-century English cookery books often seem to signal something improvised, cheap and cooked in one vessel rather than any genuine Romani origin, and this pie fits that pattern: potatoes, an onion, butter and a scrap of pastry, with the cost noted at a penny or two a pound. Mushroom ketchup at the end does the work of a meatless gravy: a bottled, long-keeping mushroom liquor that supplied savoury depth a cook could not get from stock, and it turns up repeatedly in Victorian recipes as a general-purpose seasoning.