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Turkey Patties
Line some patty-pans with good puff-paste, and bake them in the oven. When they are baked enough, take them out of the oven, and three-parts fill them with a hot savoury mixture prepared as follows. Mince a little of the white flesh of a cold cooked turkey very finely, and add a small proportion of grated ham. Stew the meat gently for a minute or two in as much melted butter or good gravy as will barely cover it, add a spoonful of thick cream, and season the preparation with a little grated lemon-rind, white pepper, salt, and powdered mace. Care should be taken that the mince is made very thick, and that the patties are not filled up so that the gravy will run over. Time, a quarter of an hour to prepare the mince. Probable cost, patties, 2d. each, exclusive of the cold meat required. Sufficient, eight or ten for a dish.
A Victorian way of using up the breast of a cold roast turkey. The whole thing hangs on making the filling thick enough to sit in the pastry case without weeping.
- Patty-pansSmall tartlet or bun tins, roughly 2 to 2.5 inches across. Modern shallow muffin tins or individual tartlet moulds do the same job; bought vol-au-vent cases fill much the same role.
- Baking the casesThe recipe gives no temperature. In a modern oven, puff paste cases bake at around 400-425F until well risen and dry through, 15-20 minutes; press the risen middles down while warm to make room for the filling.
- Mince very finelyThe instruction is doing real work. This should be knife-minced to something near a coarse paste, not diced; the filling has to hold together as a single spoonful rather than fall apart into chunks of dry breast meat.
- Thickness is the hingeThere is no flour in the mixture, so the body comes from reduction alone. Let the butter or gravy cook down until the mince mounds on a spoon before the cream goes in, then reduce again briefly. A loose filling will soak the pastry base within minutes.
- MaceThe dried outer coating of nutmeg, milder and more floral than nutmeg itself, and a standard seasoning for white meats and forcemeats in this period. Ground nutmeg can stand in, used sparingly.
- The hamA small proportion means just that, perhaps a tablespoon of finely grated ham to a cupful of turkey. It is there for salt and depth, so taste before adding further salt.
- Reheating and food safetyThe turkey is already cooked and cold. Bring the mince properly hot right through during its brief stew, fill the cases while both are hot, and serve at once rather than letting filled patties stand warm.
- YieldEight to ten patties, which the book treats as one dish for a table of several people. Reckon on about a cupful of finely minced turkey for that number.
Patties of this kind belong to a long English tradition of small pastry cases filled with a rich minced meat, and sit alongside the vol-au-vent and the bouchee that gave such dishes a French polish in the nineteenth century. The recipe is one of many Victorian made dishes built on cold roast meat: a household that roasted a whole turkey expected to eat it for several days, and the cookery books of the period devote considerable space to the second and third appearances of a joint. The costing is characteristic of books that priced dishes to the penny for readers running a household on a fixed sum; here the 2d. each is given expressly as "exclusive of the cold meat required", the turkey being assumed already paid for and sitting in the larder.