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VEAL PIE, PLAIN (for family use)
Take two pounds of the breast of veal, cut it into pieces an inch and a half square, and season the meat by sprinkling over it a savoury powder made of two tea-spoonfuls of salt, one tea-spoonful of white pepper, half a tea-spoonful of pounded mace, and half a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-rind. Pour over the meat a small quantity of water, and add a few sticks of celery, an onion, and a small bunch of sweet herbs. Let the meat heat gently, and add a little more water till there is as much as will barely cover the meat. Stew the veal very gently till it is tender. Let it remain until cold, then take out the fat. Place the meat in layers in a pie-dish, and put in with the veal a little ham or bacon, three eggs boiled hard, shelled, and sliced, and a few forcemeat balls. All or any of the latter ingredients may be omitted. Strain a little of the stock over the meat. Line the edges of the dish with pastry, cover with the same, and make a hole in the centre. Ornament the surface of the pie, brush it over with yolk of egg, and bake in a well-heated oven. Turn the pie about that it may be equally baked. Boil the gravy that was not used, and when the pie comes from the oven pour it in. If more convenient, the veal, instead of being stewed in a saucepan, may be put into a pie-dish, covered with a dish, and stewed in a moderate oven. Time to stew the veal, about one hour and a quarter; to bake the pie, three-quarters of an hour to one hour and a quarter. Probable cost, veal, 9d. or 10d. per pound.
A two-stage pie: the veal is stewed and cooled first, then assembled and baked under a lid of pastry. Nothing in the oven is doing the cooking of the meat, which is why the pastry timing is generous.
- The hinge: cool the stew completelyThe recipe has you let the meat go cold so that the fat can be lifted off. Cooling helps the pastry too: a warm filling can soften the underside of the lid before it sets. Chill the stewed veal, ideally overnight.
- Breast of vealBreast is a bony, gelatinous cut sold mainly bone-in and often only by request. Two pounds of boneless veal shoulder or shin gives the same result; if buying breast on the bone, allow closer to three pounds for two pounds of trimmed meat.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe gives no figures. A "well-heated oven" for a pie of this sort is usually read as roughly 400-425F to set and colour the pastry, dropping to about 350F if it is colouring too fast. The alternative method of stewing the veal in a covered dish in a "moderate oven" is usually taken as about 325-350F.
- Turning the pieThis addresses the uneven heat of a solid-fuel range. A modern oven needs no more than a single rotation, and often not that.
- Sweet herbsThe standard Victorian bunch is parsley, thyme and a bay leaf, sometimes with marjoram. Tie it so it can be pulled out before the meat is layered into the dish.
- Pounded maceGround mace, the lacy outer coat of the nutmeg. Half a teaspoon is right; it is more delicate than nutmeg, which is the nearest substitute -- use a little less of it.
- Forcemeat ballsSmall dumplings of minced veal or pork with breadcrumbs, suet, herbs and egg, rolled to the size of a walnut. They are listed as optional along with the ham and eggs, and the pie is complete without them.
- The gravy at the endThe reserved stock is boiled, then poured through the steam hole the moment the pie leaves the oven. It should be hot and slightly reduced; cold stock into a hot pie will not distribute. Expect it to set to a light jelly once cold.
- Pastry and dishOnly the rim is lined, so this is a pie dish with a lid rather than a fully lined case. A deep oval dish with a lip, around 1.5 quarts, suits it. The recipe does not say what pastry to use; a short crust suits this kind of family pie, though puff paste was also used.
- YieldServes four to six, hot with potatoes or cold in slices. The prices quoted, ninepence or tenpence a pound, place it firmly in the everyday range for a Victorian household.
Veal was the ordinary butcher's meat of the nineteenth-century British kitchen in a way it no longer is, and Cassell's carries a number of veal pies, from raised pies with a hot-water crust down to this one, marked "plain" and "for family use". Its structure -- meat stewed and chilled, packed in layers with hard-boiled egg and a little ham for savour, and set in its own jellied stock -- is the same logic that produced veal-and-ham pie, the difference being only that this one is baked and eaten hot. The breast was the cheap end of the animal, full of connective tissue that dissolves into a stock which sets firm on cooling, and the recipe quietly depends on that: the gelatine, not any thickening, is what binds the finished pie. The note on cost is characteristic of the dictionary, which was written for households running to a budget and consistently tells the reader what a dish should come to per pound.