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Woodcock Raised Pie, Cold
Make some good veal forcemeat. Bone four woodcocks. Put the bones and trimmings into a saucepan with a shallot, a small onion, and a sprig of thyme, and cover them with stock. Let them simmer till the gravy is strong and good. Remove the gizzard from the trail, then pound it, and mix it with the forcemeat. Place the woodcocks, skin downwards, open upon a board, spread over them first a layer of forcemeat, then two or three sliced truffles, and another layer of forcemeat. Fold the skin over, and restore the birds to something of their original shape. Line a pie-mould with pastry (see RAISED PIES). Put a layer of forcemeat at the bottom, place two woodcocks on this, cover them with a few slices of truffle and a thin layer of forcemeat, put in the other two woodcocks with a little more truffle and another layer of forcemeat, and place some thin slices of fat bacon over all. Cover the pie, and finish in the usual way. Bake in a moderate oven. Half an hour after it has been taken out of the oven, pour into it a little of the gravy from the bones, which should be strong enough to form a jelly when cold (see RAISED PIES OF GAME OR POULTRY). Close the hole in the cover, and when the pie is cold, serve on a dish covered with a napkin.
A hot-water-crust raised pie of the kind a Victorian kitchen turned out for the cold table. Most of the work is boning and building; the bake itself is slow and undramatic.
- Sourcing the birdsWild woodcock is legal game in season in Britain and Ireland and is sold by game dealers; in the United States it is a migratory game bird that cannot be bought commercially. Four boned quail, snipe or two squab give a comparable result if woodcock is not available to you.
- The trailThe trail is the bird's intestine, traditionally left in and eaten; the usual explanation given is that the woodcock's gut is largely clean. The recipe has the gizzard taken out of the trail before the trail is pounded into the forcemeat; the gizzard is gritty and is normally thrown away.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven here is 325-350F (160-175C). A pie of this depth wants an hour and a half or more; cover the crust with foil if it colours before the centre reaches 165F/74C.
- Veal forcemeatA pounded farce of lean veal, fat bacon or pork fat, breadcrumbs soaked in stock, egg and seasoning. Modern practice is to grind the meat and fat cold and pulse it in a processor rather than pound it; keep the fat proportion at roughly a third or the forcemeat will be dry and crumbly when cold.
- Fat baconThin sheets of fat flitch bacon or back fat. Period bacon was salted and often smoked; use unsmoked green streaky or plain back fat here, as a heavily smoked cure will dominate the woodcock.
- The jellyThe hinge of the dish. Bones and trimmings from four small birds rarely yield enough gelatine to set on their own, so reinforce the stock with a split veal knuckle or a calf's foot, or bloom leaf gelatine into the reduced gravy. Pour it in warm, half an hour out of the oven, through the steam hole while the pie is still hot enough to accept it, then chill.
- Cooling and keepingCool the pie quickly and refrigerate once set. A cool Victorian larder was a good deal colder than a modern kitchen, and a jellied meat pie left overnight at room temperature is not safe. Serve within three days.
- YieldFour birds in a raised crust will serve roughly eight as a cold course, cut in wedges. Serving on a napkin-covered dish was the standard presentation for a cold raised pie.
Woodcock held a peculiar rank in nineteenth-century English cookery: a small migratory wader shot in autumn and winter, prized for its dark, faintly livery flesh and for the trail, which was spread on toast and eaten as the best part of the bird. Cassell's, an encyclopaedic household dictionary assembled for the late-Victorian middle-class kitchen, gives woodcock a whole run of entries, and this one belongs to the family of raised pies built in a hinged mould with hot-water crust, baked, then filled with jellied stock so they slice clean when cold. Such pies were sideboard food, made for shooting lunches, ball suppers and the cold table, where a dish that could stand for hours and be carved at will was worth the labour of boning four birds. The truffles mark it as an ambitious rather than an everyday recipe; the direction to fold the skin back and restore each bird to "something of its original shape" shows the period's taste for a dish that concealed its own construction.