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Veal Olive Pie, Superior
Make the olives according to the instructions given in the following recipe (see VEAL OLIVES). Place them in the pie-dish, piling them highest in the centre, and intersperse amongst them a dozen or more forcemeat balls about the size of marbles, the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs cut in halves, eight or ten stewed mushrooms, and a pickled cucumber sliced. Pour over the olives some good highly-seasoned gravy thickened with brown thickening and flavoured with lemon-juice and a glassful of sherry. A little cream may be added if liked. Cover the pie with good pastry, and bake it in a well-heated oven. Time to bake a moderate-sized pie, one hour to one hour and a half.
A Victorian composed pie: veal paupiettes under pastry with a rich sherry gravy. It depends entirely on the cross-referenced VEAL OLIVES recipe, so read that first — the olives are meant to be rolled, tied and browned or part-stewed before they go into the dish.
- The hinge: cook the olives firstThe pastry lid will likely be done before raw rolled veal is properly tender, and the cross-referenced VEAL OLIVES recipe would normally have them browned and stewed before they go into the dish, though this page does not say so outright. Build the pie hot, with hot gravy, so the filling is not raised slowly from cold under a sealed crust.
- What a veal olive isThin escalopes of veal beaten out, spread with forcemeat, rolled and tied or skewered — the French paupiette. Pounded veal escalopes or slices cut from a boned leg work; ask for them cut about 1/8 inch thick.
- "A well-heated oven"No temperature is given in the book. A hot oven of roughly 425F for the first 15-20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then down to about 350F for the remainder, is one reasonable reading. The stated hour to hour and a half suits a filling that is already cooked and needs mainly to heat through and glaze.
- Brown thickeningFlour cooked in butter or dripping until nut-brown — a brown roux; period cookery books commonly have it made up in advance and kept to hand. About 1 oz each of butter and flour will thicken a pint of gravy. Modern equivalent: build a brown roux, or reduce a good veal or beef stock and finish with beurre manié.
- A glassful of sherryA wineglass in this period is roughly 2 fl oz (60 ml). Use a dry amontillado or oloroso rather than cream sherry; the gravy is already rich.
- Pickled cucumberA large brined gherkin or a dill pickle, not a sweet bread-and-butter pickle. Its job is acidity against the forcemeat and cream, so sweet pickle undoes the balance.
- Egg yolks onlyThe recipe calls for the yolks of four hard-boiled eggs, halved, distributed among the olives. No reason is given for omitting the whites, though whites can toughen over a long bake.
- CreamAdd it at the end, off the heat, to gravy that is already thickened and no longer boiling, or the lemon juice and reduction can split it. Double cream holds better than single.
- YieldA moderate-sized pie dish, perhaps 2 to 2 1/2 pints, serving around six. Vent the crust and put a pie funnel in the centre; there is a lot of liquid here.
The "olive" in veal olives has nothing to do with the fruit. One traditional explanation is the size and shape of the rolled, stuffed slice; the word has also been linked to earlier English "alows"/"aloes" of beef, from the French, and the derivation is not settled. Stuffed, rolled slices of beef and veal were being made in England well before the French paupiette entered English usage. This version is flagged "superior" because it takes a plain dish of rolled veal and loads it with the markers of a good Victorian table — forcemeat balls, stewed mushrooms, hard-boiled yolks, sherry, cream — the same logic that produced the elaborate raised and covered pies of the period, where the crust served as much to hold and enrich a composed stew as to be eaten.