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Raised Pies of Game or Poultry
This recipe may be followed in making raised pies with all kinds of birds, and the quantity of forcemeat used must be proportioned to the size and number of the birds. Mushrooms and truffles may be added if liked. Cut the bird open down the back, and bone it without injuring the skin; lay it breast downwards upon a table, and season the inside with pepper, salt, and pounded mace. Spread upon it a layer of veal forcemeat, and place on this first a layer of slices of veal, and then of slices of ham or tongue. Put a layer of forcemeat over all, and restore the bird to its original shape, making the skin meet where it was cut. Line the pie with good veal forcemeat half an inch in thickness. Lay the bird upon this, cover with forcemeat and fill the vacant spaces with forcemeat and pieces of ham and veal; place a slice of butter and two bay-leaves on the top, put on the cover, and finish the pie as directed in the following recipes (see RAISED PIES, TO FORM). Bake in a moderate oven. Whilst it is baking, stew the bones with a little seasoning to make gravy, and if this is not sufficiently strong to jelly when cold, dissolve a little isinglass in it. Pour this gravy into the pie when it is done, and serve cold. If liked, the bird may be jointed, the bones removed, and the pie filled with alternate layers of forcemeat, game, veal, and ham; but it must be remembered that the undermost and uppermost layers should be composed of forcemeat. It is always an improvement to lard the fleshy parts of game or poultry with thin slices of bacon. Time, a good-sized pie, made with a large chicken and three or four slices of ham and veal, will require from four to five hours' baking.
A Victorian raised game pie: hot-water crust standing free, a boned bird packed in forcemeat, and a jellied stock poured in after baking. The technique is sound, but the timings and the cooling deserve attention.
- The hinge: the jelly goes in hot, the pie cools fastThe gravy must be poured through the hole in the lid while the pie is still warm, or it will set before it reaches the gaps and leave air pockets that spoil the keeping. Once filled, cool the pie quickly and refrigerate; a large meat pie left to cool slowly at room temperature sits for hours in the range where bacteria multiply.
- "A moderate oven"The book gives no temperatures; a moderate oven is conventionally rendered as somewhere around 350F. For a pie of this depth, 325F is more manageable over a long bake; the crust will colour long before the centre is done, so cover it with foil or buttered paper once it has taken good colour.
- Judge by temperature, not the clockTake the centre of the filling to 165F on an instant-read thermometer through the steam hole. The recipe's four to five hours is for a large chicken pie with three or four slices of ham and veal; in a modern oven it may well reach temperature sooner, so start checking well before the stated time.
- IsinglassGelatine from the swim bladders of sturgeon and other fish; still sold for brewing and fining, but hard to find for kitchen use and unnecessary here. Use ordinary powdered or leaf gelatine, about half an ounce to a pint of stock, softened and dissolved in the hot gravy. If the bones have been stewed long enough the stock may set on its own, in which case no addition is needed — the recipe itself says to add isinglass only if it will not jelly.
- Veal forcemeatMinced veal bound with fat pork or bacon, breadcrumbs, egg, and seasoning. Veal mince can be hard to find in some places; a mix of pork shoulder and a little chicken thigh behaves much the same way. Keep the mixture generously fatty or the pie will bake dry and crumbly.
- Pounded maceThe lacy outer casing of the nutmeg seed, sold as blades or ready ground. Ground mace from a jar will stand in for pounded blades, though it loses potency on the shelf; use it with a light hand.
- Larding with baconGame and breast meat have almost no internal fat and will go stringy in a long bake. Thin bacon laid over the fleshy parts, or strips drawn through with a larding needle, is doing real work here rather than decorating.
- Boning the birdCut down the backbone and work the knife against the carcass, keeping the skin whole; the leg and wing bones come out last. The stripped bones go straight into the stockpot for the jelly, so nothing is wasted. The jointed version at the end of the recipe is far easier and eats much the same.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield, but a pie built on a large chicken with veal and ham will serve a good number as a cold course. Serve it properly cold, cut in wedges, with pickles or a sharp salad. Eat within three or four days, refrigerated.
Raised pies descend from the medieval "coffyn" that served as a cooking vessel, though how far it was also meant to be eaten is disputed. Hot-water crust is strong enough to be moulded by hand around a wooden block or packed into a hinged mould, and it stands unsupported through a long bake, which is why it suited a pie meant to be carried whole to a cold table. The raised pie was the standard Victorian answer to a shooting season: birds boned, layered with veal and ham, sealed under jelly, and kept for the sideboard, the picnic hamper or the shooting lunch. The instruction to nest one meat inside another and restore the bird to its shape belongs to a much older tradition of stuffed and reconstructed birds, and the same logic on a grander scale produced the multi-bird pies of the great country houses. That the whole thing is finished with stock from its own bones is simply the economy of a kitchen where nothing that could yield gelatine was discarded.