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Potato Pie, with Sausage-Meat
Line the edges of a pie-dish with good crust, and butter the inside rather thickly. Mash five or six mealy potatoes with a little pepper and salt, a well-beaten egg, and as much milk as will make a thick batter. Mix with this an equal quantity of nicely-seasoned sausage-meat, and fill the pie with the preparation. Cover with a good crust, and bake in a well-heated oven. Send good brown gravy to table with the pie. Time to bake, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 2s. for a moderate-sized pie. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A plain Victorian supper pie: raw sausage-meat bound with mashed potato under a pastry lid. The one thing to watch is that the filling goes in raw, so the centre has to reach a safe temperature before the crust burns.
- The hinge: cook the filling throughThe sausage-meat is uncooked when the pie is assembled, and a dense potato-and-meat filling heats slowly. Three-quarters of an hour is about right for a shallow dish, but check the centre reaches 71C/160F before serving; tent the pastry with foil if it colours first.
- "A well-heated oven"The book gives no temperature. A hot oven, roughly 200-220C/400-425F, will set the pastry; dropping to 180C/350F after 20 minutes lets the filling catch up.
- Mealy potatoesFloury varieties - Maris Piper, King Edward, russet. Waxy potatoes will not mash to the light batter the recipe wants and turn gluey when beaten with egg. Five or six medium potatoes is around 700-900g.
- Sausage-meatBulk pork sausage-meat, not sausages in casings, though skinned good-quality sausages work. Victorian English sausage-meat was commonly seasoned with sage and pepper, sometimes with mace or nutmeg; supermarket sausage-meat is usually seasoned already, so taste before adding more.
- "A thick batter"Add the milk cautiously. The mash should be soft enough to fold evenly through the meat but stiff enough to hold a spoon upright - if it slumps, the pie will be sodden under the lid.
- The crustA shortcrust or rough puff. Lining only the rim of the dish, as directed, means the filling sits directly on the buttered china and only the top and edge are pastry, which uses less pastry than a fully lined dish. Cut a vent in the lid or the steam will lift it.
- GravyThe filling has only the milk and egg beaten into the mash, so it bakes fairly dry and the brown gravy earns its place. A meat or onion gravy made separately and sent to table in a boat, as written.
- Yield and costFour or five as a main course. The "2s." is shillings, and is not a figure you can convert usefully.
Potato pie belongs to the northern English tradition of stretching a small amount of meat with a large amount of potato. Sausage-meat sold loose by the pound was a butcher's staple through the nineteenth century - the trimmings and cheaper cuts, minced and seasoned heavily with sage and pepper - and pairing it with mashed potato under a crust gave a filling supper for a household of five at a cost the book records as two shillings. The instruction to line only the edges of the dish is worth noticing: pastry was the expensive element, and a rim of crust with a lid gave the appearance of a pie for less flour and butter than a fully lined one. That economy runs through the whole of Cassell's family cookery.