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Veal Pie, Solid
Put a piece of the knuckle of veal into a stewpan, cover with water, let it boil up, then simmer till the meat is quite tender. Let it get cold, then divide it into small pieces. Butter a plain round or oval shape, and cover the bottom with the yolks and whites of hard-boiled eggs neatly arranged. Place over these some pieces of the meat and gristle, with a seasoning of salt, pepper, pounded mace, and grated lemon-rind. Pour in a little of the gravy in which the meat was boiled, and which ought to form a strong jelly when cold, and fill the dish with the meat, hard-boiled eggs, and sliced beetroot, so arranged that the colours will contrast prettily. Pour in as much gravy as will cover the ingredients, and bake the pie in a well-heated oven. When quite cold, turn it out. It ought to have a glazed appearance. Time to bake, twenty minutes.
This is a moulded meat jelly rather than a pie in the pastry sense — the "solid" of the title means there is no crust, only meat set in its own stock. Everything depends on the stock setting firm, so the cooking of the knuckle matters more than the twenty minutes in the oven.
- The hinge: gelatine in the stockA veal knuckle (the shank, with its joint and connective tissue) is valued here as much for the gelatine it releases as for its meat. Cover it with water as the recipe says and hold it at a bare tremble for 2 to 3 hours; avoid topping up with water partway, which dilutes the liquor and weakens the set. Chill a spoonful on a saucer before assembling; if it does not wobble firm, reduce the stock further.
- Cut of meatAsk for veal shank, bone in, about 2 to 2.5 lb. If veal knuckle is unavailable, a mixture of veal shoulder plus a split calf's foot or a couple of pig's trotters gives the same setting power. The "gristle" the recipe wants kept is the softened cartilage, which turns translucent and pleasant when cold.
- "A plain round or oval shape"A shape is a mould — a charlotte mould, a small loaf tin or a deep pudding basin of about 1.5 quarts. Butter it lightly, or line it with plastic wrap for easier turning out; the buttering is for release, not flavour.
- Oven heat"A well-heated oven" indicates a hot oven; somewhere in the region of 400F is a reasonable modern equivalent, though the term is imprecise. Twenty minutes is enough only to heat the assembled mould through and settle the stock around the meat; there is nothing raw in it to cook.
- Pounded maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg, sold today as blades or ready ground. A quarter teaspoon ground is ample for this quantity. Grated lemon rind should be zest only, no pith.
- BeetrootThe beetroot must be cooked and cooled before slicing. It bleeds, so slice it thin, blot it, and lay it against the egg white for the colour contrast the recipe is after rather than mixing it through.
- Setting and turning out"When quite cold" means fully chilled — at least 6 hours, better overnight in the refrigerator. Dip the mould briefly in hot water and invert onto a cold plate. The glazed look comes from the jelly, not from any glaze applied.
- SeasoningCold jellied dishes taste flat if seasoned to hot-food levels. Season the stock more assertively than seems right while it is warm, then taste it again after chilling a spoonful.
- Yield and servingA 1.5 quart mould serves six to eight as a cold lunch dish. Cut it in wedges or thick slices with a hot wet knife, and serve with salad, pickles or mustard.
Cassell's places this among the cold moulded meats that were a fixture of the Victorian and Edwardian sideboard, where a dish had to look as well as it ate — hence the instruction to arrange egg, meat and beetroot "so that the colours will contrast prettily". Calling it a pie is not loose usage so much as older usage: in nineteenth-century usage a pie normally implied a crust, and crustless "solid" pies were the flagged exception, which is precisely why the title needs the qualifier, distinguishing this version from the raised veal-and-ham pies it otherwise resembles. The whole thing rests on a technique that was second nature in a nineteenth-century kitchen and has largely left the domestic repertoire: extracting enough gelatine from a knuckle bone that the cooking liquor sets by itself, without powdered gelatine or isinglass. Veal knuckle, calf's foot and cow-heel were cheap and well established as setting agents, and cookery books of the period assume a reader who knows that a good stock jellies as a matter of course.