Home › The Principles of Cookery › Yorkshire Pie
Yorkshire Pie
A true Yorkshire pie, such as constitutes a standing dish during the Christmas festivities at the hospitable board of a Yorkshire squire, is simply a raised pie filled with poultry and game of different kinds, put one inside the other or side by side. These pies are sometimes made of a large size; and it is recorded that one of them, which was sent from Sheffield in 1832 as a present to the then Lord Chancellor Brougham, broke down on account of its weight. Yorkshire pies require both skill and patience in their manufacture. They are not common, and are becoming less and less so; nevertheless, when successfully made they form a most-excellent dish, and one sure to be highly appreciated. Turkey, pheasants, ducks, fowls, grouse, snipes, and tongue; any or all of these may enter into their composition. Whatever birds are used should be boned and partially stewed before being put into the pie: the smallest of them should be filled with good, highly-seasoned veal forcemeat; a layer of forcemeat should be placed at the bottom of the pie, and all the vacant places filled with the same. A recipe is here given for making a moderate-sized pie. Bone a fowl and a goose; fill the fowl with good veal forcemeat, truss it, and sew it up. Truss the goose, and put the two side by side in a stewpan which will just hold them. Pour over them as much stock as will cover them, and let them simmer gently for half an hour. Take them up, put the fowl inside the goose, truss the latter, and sew it up. Line a pie mould with some pastry, such as is used for making raised pies, rolled out to a good thickness. Cover the bottom with a layer of forcemeat, lay the goose upon it, pour a little of the liquor in which it was stewed over it, and place round it slices of pigeons, boned hare, tongue, etc. Fill the vacant places with forcemeat, and when the meat is closely packed in the crust put over it a layer of clarified butter. Place the pastry cover on the top, brush over with egg, ornament it, bind several folds of buttered paper round it, and bake in a well-heated oven. Make a little strong jelly by boiling the bones and trimmings with seasoning and spices, and pour this into the pie after it is baked. When the pie is to be served, place it on a dish covered with a napkin, remove the cover whole, and cut the meat into thin slices. The pastry of a pie like this is not made to be eaten, but is simply intended as a case in which to preserve and serve the meat. When a skewer will pierce easily to the bottom of the pie in the centre it is done enough. Time to bake the pie, four hours or more.
This is a raised game pie of the old English kind: a standing hot-water crust used as a mould and a preservative rather than as something to eat. It is a two-day project, and most of the work is butchery.
- The hinge: bone the birds properlyEverything else depends on the goose and fowl being completely boned, so the finished pie carves in clean slices from crust to centre. Leave the leg and wing bones in and the slices will fall apart. A butcher will bone birds to order if asked in advance.
- "Well-heated oven", four hoursThe book gives no temperature, so any figure is a modern inference: something like 425F for 20-30 minutes to set the crust, then 325-350F for the remaining three and a half hours. The buttered paper bound round the sides is doing the job of foil; use foil, and add more if the crust colours too fast.
- Judge it by temperature, not the skewerThe old test of a skewer passing easily to the centre is a texture test. Take the deepest part of the meat to 165F on an instant-read thermometer, inserted through the vent.
- Cut a vent holeThe recipe assumes you know to leave a hole in the pastry lid, both for steam and for pouring in the jelly afterwards. Without one the crust will lift or split.
- Raised-pie pastryThe "pastry such as is used for making raised pies" is hot-water crust: flour, lard and boiling water, worked while warm and moulded thick, roughly a quarter-inch. It is stiff by design and will not behave like shortcrust.
- Veal forcemeatGround veal with breadcrumbs, suet, egg, lemon zest, mace, nutmeg and plenty of salt and pepper. Ground pork or pork sausagemeat is a common modern substitute and is closer to what most people will find at a counter.
- The game listSnipe and hare are not general retail items and grouse is seasonal and expensive. Pheasant, duck, guinea fowl, pigeon and a piece of cured tongue will give the same effect. Check that anything shot is free of lead shot before it goes in.
- The jelly, and when to add itReduce the stock from the bones and trimmings until a spoonful sets firm when chilled; a little added gelatine is normal insurance. Pour it in cool but still liquid, through the vent, once the pie has come down to warm, and keep pouring in stages as it soaks into the gaps.
- Cooling, keeping and yieldA goose-and-fowl pie of this scale should feed twenty or more as part of a cold table. Modern practice is to cool it quickly and refrigerate it, then serve within three or four days; the clarified butter and jelly seal was a larder measure, not a substitute for a cold fridge.
The Yorkshire Christmas pie was a genuine institution rather than a cookbook fancy. Hannah Glasse printed a version in 1747 in which turkey, goose, fowl, partridge and pigeon are boned and nested one inside the other in a thick standing crust, and she notes that such pies were often sent to London as presents. That is the point of the heavy, inedible case and the butter-and-jelly seal: the pie was a travelling larder, built to survive the journey and then to be opened at table and sliced cold. Cassell's anecdote about the Sheffield pie that collapsed under its own weight on its way to Lord Chancellor Brougham belongs to that gift-sending tradition; Brougham held the office from 1830 to 1834, so the date given is at least plausible. The editors' own remark that the dish was becoming less common is borne out by the text.