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POTATO PIE (another way) (Peel and slice some potatoes)
Peel and slice some potatoes thin, and put them into a pie-dish. Between each layer of potatoes place some sliced onion-to every pound of potatoes allow, say, three-quarters of an ounce of onion-add pepper and salt, put in a little water, and cut about two ounces of dripping or suet into little bits; lay these on the top, cover the pie close with common paste, and let it bake for about an hour and a half. The taste of the pie will be improved by the addition of a few slices of bacon. Time, about one hour and a half to bake. POTATO PIE, "TEN TO ONE."
This pie is a great favourite in country places in the North of England. Line the edges of a deep pie-dish with good crust. Fill it either with beef steak or slices of mutton nicely seasoned, and slices of raw potato the third of an inch thick, and allow eight or ten slices of potato to one piece of meat. Pour a little gravy or water over the whole, cover with a good crust, and bake in a moderate oven. Serve very hot. The pie must be gently baked, or the pastry will be burnt before the potatoes are sufficiently cooked. Time to bake, one hour and a half or more, according to the size of the pie.
Two versions of the same idea: a cheap all-vegetable pie, and the meat-and-potato pie of the northern counties. Both hinge on the fact that raw potato takes longer to cook than pastry takes to colour.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" is usually reckoned at somewhere around 350F/180C, and the warning about gentle baking is the real instruction. If the crust is browning at 30 minutes, drop the heat or lay a sheet of foil over the top; the potatoes need the full 90 minutes to go tender in the steam.
- Common pasteA plain paste made with dripping or lard rather than butter, and leaner than a rich butter crust. Any standard shortcrust works, but keep it on the thicker side so it does not collapse into the wet filling.
- Dripping and suetBeef dripping is sold by good butchers and online; shredded suet, including vegetarian suet, is a supermarket item in Britain and a specialist one elsewhere. Lard or bacon fat gives the same result in the first pie.
- The onion ratioThree-quarters of an ounce per pound of potato is about 20g, roughly a quarter of a small onion. That is a Victorian sense of restraint with onion; modern taste generally runs to more.
- Slice thicknessThe second pie specifies a third of an inch, about 8mm, which is thick. That thickness is what allows the slices to hold their shape through a long bake instead of dissolving into the gravy.
- "Ten to one"The name is the ratio: eight to ten slices of potato per piece of meat. Half a pound of chuck steak or shoulder mutton to two pounds of potatoes is in the right territory. Cut the meat small, in pieces no bigger than a walnut, or it will still be tough when the crust is done.
- Liquid"A little water" or gravy means a few tablespoons, not a poured-over cupful. The potatoes and onion release plenty of their own; too much liquid gives you a soup with a lid and a soggy base.
- YieldA standard 1.5-litre pie dish, roughly two pounds of potatoes, serves four as a main course with something green alongside.
The potato pie belongs to the economical end of the nineteenth-century table, where a pound of potatoes and a scrap of fat had to do the work of a joint. The second version, still made in Lancashire and Yorkshire, is close kin to the meat-and-potato pie sold at bakeries and football grounds across the north of England; the name "ten to one" is best read as a piece of dry local honesty about how much potato you are getting for your meat. The suggestion to add "a few slices of bacon" is the whole logic of the dish in miniature, a small quantity of something salty and fatty recruited to flavour a great deal of something cheap.