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Veal Pie, with Pork
Take equal quantities of veal and pork in slices half an inch thick, cut the meat into neat pieces, and season these with pepper, salt, and pounded mace. Boil two onions, mince them finely, and mix with them a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley and another of shredded sage. Fill the dish with alternate layers of veal and pork, and sprinkle a little of the savoury mixture over each layer. Pour half a tea-cupful of veal stock or water over the meat, cover with pastry, and bake in the usual way. Time to bake the pie, an hour and a half to two hours.
A plain raised-flavour meat pie of the sort Cassell's expected any cook to assemble without being told the size of the dish or the heat of the oven. Two details carry it: the meat must be cut small enough to cook through in the time given, and the crust needs a vent.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature at all; "bake in the usual way" assumed a cook who knew her own range. A hot start to set the pastry followed by a moderate heat for the remainder is the usual modern equivalent, but the figures are a reconstruction, not Cassell's instruction.
- A tea-cupfulA Victorian teacup is usually reckoned at about a quarter of a pint, which would make half a teacupful roughly 2 1/2 fl oz (70 ml), though the measure was never standard. Either way it is deliberately little: the veal and pork release a good deal of juice. Cut a hole in the crust and, if the pie looks dry when you serve it, add hot stock through the hole rather than more at the start.
- The meatHalf-inch slices cut into "neat pieces" is not defined; pieces of an inch or so, rather than cubes, suit the timing. Veal shoulder and boneless pork shoulder in equal weight work well; scale the quantity to your dish and expect a 2-pint dish to take rather less than 3 lb of meat. Lean loin of either will be dry after two hours.
- Pounded maceBlade mace pounded in a mortar. Ground mace from a jar is the same spice but fades faster, so err on the generous side. The recipe gives no quantities; about 1/2 teaspoon of mace to 3 lb of meat, with salt and pepper to taste, is a reasonable starting point.
- Boiling the onions firstThe recipe calls for it, so do it: boiled and then minced onion is milder and sweeter than raw. Drain them well before mixing with the herbs.
- Sage"Shredded" means finely sliced fresh sage, and a teaspoonful is the right restraint — it belongs to the pork, and more will dominate the veal. Dried sage at the same volume would be too strong; use half.
- Doneness and timingAn hour and a half of baking takes the filling well past the 145F recommended for pork; two hours suits a deep dish packed tight. Test with a skewer through the vent: the meat should offer no resistance.
- ServingLet it stand 15 minutes so the juices thicken slightly and the layers hold when cut. Cold, the juices may set to a light jelly if you use a well-made veal stock; cold pie was certainly eaten as well as hot.
Veal and pork together is an old English pairing built on complementary qualities rather than fashion: veal is lean and mild, pork fat and assertive, and layering them lets the fat baste the veal. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery carries many variations on the raised and dish-baked meat pie, which suited a household with a coal range and no refrigeration -- a pie kept better than a roast, travelled to a picnic or a shooting lunch, and was as good cold as hot. The seasoning here, mace with sage and parsley, is eighteenth-century in character; mace was a mainstay of English forcemeats and potted meats. Veal was far more common on British tables then than now, a by-product of the dairy trade, which is why so many Victorian books assume a supply of veal stock.