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Veal Pies, Raised, Small
Take the lean part of the best end of a neck of veal, with half its weight in thinly-sliced ham. Divide the meat into pieces an inch square. Put the bones and trimmings of the meat into a saucepan, cover them with water, add flavouring ingredients, and stew the liquor till it is pleasantly flavoured and so strong that it will jelly when cold. Put the veal into a stewpan, cover it with the strained stock, and add one-eighth of a pint of cream and a few mushrooms, if these can be obtained. Let the veal simmer gently for an hour, then let it get cold. Line some small pate moulds. Fill them with the preparation, cover them, and bake till done enough. Serve cold. Time to bake the pies, according to size; say till a skewer will pierce them easily. (See also VEAL PIE, RAISED.)
This is a hot-water-crust raised pie in miniature, and the entry assumes you already know how to make and mould the paste — Cassell's cross-reference to the full-sized version is doing a lot of work. The hinge is the stock: it must set to a firm jelly cold, or the little pies will be dry and hollow.
- Test the jelly before you commitSimmer the bones and trimmings until a spoonful chilled on a saucer sets firm. Veal bones are rich in gelatine, but if yours are meagre the stock will stay liquid; reinforce it with a split pig's trotter rather than relying on the pot alone.
- One-eighth of a pintAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 2.5 fl oz of cream — about 5 tablespoons. It is a seasoning for the whole pan of meat, not a sauce base.
- Best end of neckThe rib section, sold today as veal rack or rib chops. Boneless veal shoulder is cheaper and better suited to a pie, since it holds moisture through both the simmer and the bake. Keep the bones for the stock either way.
- Pâté mouldsSmall hinged raised-pie moulds, or a straight-sided dariole tin. A deep muffin tin lined with hot-water crust works, though the sides will be thinner than the original intends. Line while the paste is still warm and pliable.
- OvenNo temperature is given because the range had none. Start at 400F to set the crust, then drop to 350F. Small pies take roughly 40 to 50 minutes; a skewer through the centre should meet no resistance and the meat should read 160F.
- Filling the pies coldLetting the stewed veal go cold first is deliberate. Warm filling slumps the paste and the fat runs before the crust has set. Chill it thoroughly, and chill the lined moulds too if the kitchen is warm.
- The jelly goes in after bakingTopping up with jelly -- The recipe already puts the jellying stock in with the meat before the moulds are filled, and says nothing about adding more afterwards. Customary raised-pie practice is to leave a small vent in each lid and pour warm, well-seasoned stock through it once the pies are out of the oven and beginning to cool, then refrigerate until set; treat that as an addition rather than a reading of the entry.
- Yield and servingA neck end of about 2 lb with 1 lb of ham fills six to eight small pies. Serve fully cold, the day after baking, with mustard or a sharp pickle.
Raised pies belong to the oldest surviving branch of English pastry, in which the crust began as a container — the medieval "coffin" — built by hand from a stiff paste of flour, water and hot fat, and only gradually became something people expected to eat. By the time Cassell's dictionary was compiled in the later nineteenth century the technique had settled into two familiar forms: the large game or pork pie for a sideboard, and the small individual pie of the sort described here, meant for luncheon tables, picnics and cold suppers. Veal and ham was a common pairing for the genteel version, the ham supplying salt and colour against meat that is mild to the point of blandness, and the bone stock supplying the jelly that fills the gap left as the filling shrinks. The entry's casual "a few mushrooms, if these can be obtained" suggests fresh mushrooms were not reliably available to every kitchen of the period.