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Potato Pie
It is a good plan to have made a tin lid perforated with holes, and with a handle at each end, to fit an ordinary-sized pie-dish, on purpose for potato pies. This lid should fit down at least an inch below the level of the dish, and before using it the first time it should be washed in boiling soda and water, as new tin is sometimes poisonous. Having obtained this lid, cut the cold meat into neat slices, sprinkle over them a little pepper and salt, two finely-minced onions, half a cupful of gravy-or failing this, water-and two or three lumps of butter or good beef dripping. Put on the tin lid, and pile upon it as many cold boiled potatoes, mashed with milk, as will fill the space to the top of the dish. Bake in a well-heated oven. Send the pie to table in the dish in which it was baked, with a hot napkin pinned round. The top should be brightly browned. Time to bake, one hour. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A cottage pie built on cold roast meat, with one unusual piece of equipment: a perforated tin plate that holds the mashed potato clear of the meat and gravy below. Almost everything here translates directly; the lid is the part that needs thought.
- The perforated lidIts job is to keep the mash from sinking into the gravy while letting steam pass through, so the potato bakes dry and browns rather than turning to sludge. A wire cooling rack cut to fit the dish, or a disc of foil pierced all over and resting on the rim of the meat layer, does the same work. Without it, drain the meat of all but a little gravy and spread the mash firmly over the surface instead.
- The soda-and-water warningNew tinware of the period could carry lead from the solder or residues from manufacture, hence the instruction to scald it. Modern stainless steel, foil and oven-safe racks need no such treatment.
- "A well-heated oven"Probably somewhere around 400F (200C), though the book gives no temperature and any figure is an inference. An hour at that heat is generous for food that is already cooked; the time is really there to brown the top and heat the meat through.
- Cold meatThis is a leftovers dish, built on the remains of a roast. Any cooked beef, lamb or mutton works, sliced rather than minced, which gives a firmer texture than modern cottage pie. Reheat it until piping hot throughout, not merely warm.
- Gravy or waterHalf a cupful is roughly 4 fl oz by modern measure, though a Victorian 'cupful' was not a standardised quantity. Leftover roast gravy is the point; water plus the butter or dripping is the fallback, and a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce or a little stock closes the gap in flavour.
- Two onions rawMinced raw onion scattered over sliced meat will still have bite after an hour under cover. Softening it in the dripping first gives a sweeter, more integrated result.
- Cost and yieldTwo shillings was the book's own estimate, from the late 1870s or 1880s; the modern equivalent is meaningless, but the pie still feeds four or five. A hot napkin pinned round the dish was a recognised way of sending a bakeware dish to table.
This is not a grand dish but a system for using up Sunday's joint. The perforated tin lid is a nice piece of nineteenth-century domestic ingenuity, made to fit a standard pie-dish, and it marks the difference between this and the cottage pie most people make now, where the potato is spread straight onto the meat. The passing remark that "new tin is sometimes poisonous" is worth noting on its own account: lead-bearing solder and impure tinplate are generally said to have been a real hazard in the period, and advice to scald new tinware before use appears in household manuals of the time.