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VEAL PIE, WITH POTATOES (Cold Meat Cookery)
Cut some cold cooked veal into small neat pieces, and slice double the quantity of small cold boiled potatoes. Butter a pie-dish, and fill it with alternate layers of cold meat and sliced potatoes. Season each layer with pepper and salt, grated nutmeg, and grated lemonrind, and lay little pieces of butter here and there upon it. Cover the meat with good pastry, and bake in a well-heated oven. When the pastry is done enough, the pie will be ready for serving.
A frugal way to use up a Sunday joint, and one that works only if you compensate for the fact that everything in the dish is already cooked. The pastry sets the timing; the filling just needs to heat through.
- Oven temperatureA "well-heated oven" here means 400-425F. Shortcrust needs that heat to set and brown before the butter leaks out; 25-35 minutes will usually see both the crust coloured and the filling hot.
- ProportionsTwice as much potato as veal, as written, gives a mild, starchy pie; the original does not say whether the doubling is by weight or by volume. For 4 servings figure roughly 12 oz cooked veal to 1 1/2 lb cooked new or waxy potatoes in a 9-inch dish.
- Add liquidThe original gives none, which leaves the pie dry. A few tablespoons of good veal or chicken stock poured in before the lid goes on, or a little of the gravy from the original roast, makes the difference between a pie and a bake.
- Lemon rind and nutmegNot decorative. These two are the standard Victorian seasoning for veal, which is bland on its own; use the zest of half a lemon and a generous grating of nutmeg for the whole dish, and keep them off the pastry rim where they will scorch.
- Waxy potatoes onlyCold boiled floury potatoes collapse into paste when reheated in a wet pie. Use waxy varieties, boiled the day before, and slice them about 1/4 inch thick.
- Seal and ventEgg-wash the rim before laying the lid on and cut a steam hole. Without a vent the trapped steam lifts the pastry off the filling and leaves the underside raw.
- Reheating cooked meatCold cooked veal should have been refrigerated promptly and used within two or three days. Bring the pie to a full 165F in the centre, and do not reheat the finished pie a second time.
"Cold Meat Cookery" was a standing section in many large nineteenth-century English cookery books, Cassell's included, and it reflects the shape of the middle-class week: a substantial roast on Sunday, then several days of ingenious reconstruction. Veal was a more common English meat then than now, and its neutrality suited it to this treatment, frequently paired with the brightening seasonings of lemon peel and nutmeg that also flavour veal forcemeat and mock-turtle soup. The dish belongs to the same family as shepherd's pie and rissoles: nothing new is bought, the potatoes are yesterday's too, and the only fresh work is the pastry. A pastry lid was one accepted means of making a second appearance seem like a first.