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Potato Pasty, Modern
In order to make this properly, a pasty-pan must be procured which has a well-fitting perforated plate and a valve-pipe to screw on. This can be had of almost any ironmonger, and will cost from 4s. to 5s. The meat, seasoning, and gravy are put into the lower part. The plate is then laid on the meat, the valve-pipe screwed on, and mashed potatoes spread equally on the top. The pasty should be baked in a moderate oven and sent to table in the same tin in which it was baked, which should have a neatly-folded napkin pinned round it. The cover should not be removed until the meat is to be served, and an empty dish should be placed in readiness for it. If properly baked, the potatoes will be nicely browned, and will be flavoured like the meat. The contents of this pie may, of, course, be varied indefinitely. Mutton or veal cutlets, pork chops, chickens or rabbits cut into neat joints, and fish of various kinds may all be used, and will all be found excellent. The meat should be neatly trimmed, and nicely seasoned, and a small quantity of gravy poured over it. The mashed potatoes should form a crust at least three inches thick. Two pounds of meat and three pounds of potatoes will make a moderate-sized pasty. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for four persons.
This is a mashed-potato-crusted meat pie built in a piece of Victorian kit that no longer exists. The dish works in ordinary cookware, but you have to understand what the special pan was doing before you can replace it.
- The pasty-pan and its valve-pipeThe pan was a deep tin with a perforated inner plate that sat on the meat, and a screw-on pipe that carried steam up through the potato crust and out. The plate kept the potato off the gravy; the pipe stopped the crust being waterlogged from below. A deep casserole with a lid works, but expect a softer crust.
- Improvising the plate and pipeA round cake rack or a perforated pizza disc cut to fit will hold the potato clear of the meat, and a small funnel or an inverted metal piping tip pushed through the centre of the crust vents steam in much the same way as the original pipe.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350F/175C. Two pounds of raw meat under a three-inch potato lid needs a long, steady bake — allow around two hours for mutton, veal or rabbit, and check that the meat is tender before browning the top.
- Fish is the exceptionThe recipe treats fish as interchangeable with mutton, which it is not. Fillets are cooked through in 15 to 20 minutes and will disintegrate over two hours. If you use fish, cook the potato crust separately or reduce the bake drastically.
- The three-inch crustThree pounds of potato mashed three inches deep is the point of the dish — it is crust, not topping. Mash it stiff, with butter rather than much milk, or it will slump and let the gravy through.
- Only a small quantity of gravyThe pan traps most of what the meat gives off, so the liquid level rises during baking. Something like half a cup for two pounds of meat is a safe starting point; more and the potato sits in it.
- Serving as directedIt goes to table covered, in the tin it was baked in, with a neatly folded napkin pinned round it. The cover stays on until the meat is to be served, and an empty dish is set ready to receive it.
- Cost and yield"Probable cost, 4s" is Victorian shillings and tells you nothing useful now, though it is worth noting the pan itself cost as much as the dinner, or more. Sufficient for four, as stated.
This pasty is built around a manufactured gadget rather than a pastry case: tinware dishes of this kind were sold to middle-class British kitchens in the second half of the nineteenth century. The older sense of "pasty" is a filling enclosed in a crust and baked without a dish, as in the Cornish pasty; here the potato does the enclosing, which made the dish cheaper than one built with butter or suet pastry and let the crust take up the flavour of the meat beneath, as the recipe itself promises. It is telling that the first thing the reader is sent to buy is not an ingredient but a pan, to be had "of almost any ironmonger" for 4s. to 5s.