Home › The Principles of Cookery › VEAL, BRIDE'S PIE OF (a Scottish dish)
VEAL, BRIDE'S PIE OF (a Scottish dish)
Take two large calf's feet, and boil them till they are quite tender. Make a mixture as for mince pies, with the calf's-feet flesh cut up very small, a pound of finely-shredded suet, a pound of apples pared, cored, and minced, half a pound of picked and dried currants, half a pound of raisins, two ounces of mixed candied peel, a pinch of powdered cinnamon, and one small nutmeg, grated. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and moisten them with a glassful of brandy and a glassful of port. Line a dish with good pastry. Put in the mince, and conceal a gold ring in it. Cover the pie with pastry, and ornament with any suitable devices. Bake it until the pastry is done enough. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. (exclusive of the ring, of course). Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A meat mincemeat of the older kind, built on the gelatinous flesh of calf's feet rather than beef. The cooking is straightforward; the archaic parts are the units, the cut, and the ring.
- Calf's feetSold by butchers who handle whole animals, and worth ordering ahead. They need two to three hours at a bare simmer before the meat pulls from the bone; the flesh is largely collagen, which is what gives the filling its sticky richness. Boil them the day before and let the meat cool before chopping, as it is far easier to cut small when set.
- If you cannot get themAn equal weight of boneless veal shin or shoulder, braised until it shreds, gives the closest texture. Ordinary lean minced veal will work but the filling loses the gelatinous body the original depends on.
- A glassfulThe recipe does not specify what glass. A wineglassful in Victorian cookery is conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though sizes varied, so the brandy and port together probably come to something near half a cup. That is a modest amount of liquid for this quantity of fruit and meat; add it gradually and stop when the mixture just holds together rather than pouring it all in at once.
- SuetShredded beef suet, which comes ready-shredded and floured in packets. Do not substitute butter, which melts out and leaves the filling greasy at the base of the pie; frozen grated lard is a closer stand-in than butter if suet is unavailable.
- Currants and peel"picked and dried" means gone over for stalks and grit and dried off after washing, a step modern packaged currants no longer need. Two ounces of mixed candied peel is roughly a third of a cup chopped; buy whole candied citron and orange peel rather than the diced supermarket kind if you want any citrus character to survive the spicing.
- The bakeThe recipe specifies no temperature, only "until the pastry is done enough". A modern equivalent would be a hot oven, around 400-425F, for about 20 minutes to set and colour the crust, then 350F for a further 30 to 40 minutes. The meat is already cooked, so it is largely the pastry that dictates the timing. A pie dish of 9 to 10 inches suits this quantity.
- The ringA hard metal object concealed in food is a genuine choking and dental hazard, and the pie is cut and served blind. If the tradition matters, bake the ring into a marked portion, or wrap it and set it on top under the pastry lid where the server knows to find it.
- YieldSix to eight as the original states, though the filling is very rich and this is closer to eight modest portions than six generous ones. It keeps well for several days refrigerated and is better on the second day.
The bride's pie belongs to a Scottish wedding custom in which a large pie, usually of meat or mincemeat, was cut at the marriage feast and a ring baked inside it; the woman whose slice held the ring was said to be the next to marry, the same conceit attached elsewhere to the wedding cake and to charms in Twelfth Night cakes. The recipe is also a survival of the older meaning of mincemeat, which for centuries genuinely contained meat -- neat's tongue, beef, or as here the gelatinous flesh of calf's feet -- alongside the suet, dried fruit, spice and spirits. Through the nineteenth century the meat quietly dropped out of English mince pies, leaving suet as the only animal trace, so a book like Cassell's, compiling regional and ceremonial dishes in the 1870s, was already recording something its readers would have found old-fashioned. The costing of 3s. 6d. marks it as a substantial but not extravagant dish.