Chicken Pie
For a large pie take 2 nice chickens; cut them at the joints, put them in salted boiling water, and parboil until tender. Lift them out and cut them up as for a fricassee. Some of the larger bones should be taken out. Make a good pastry, and line a deep earthen baking-dish or "nappy" with a rather thin layer of the paste. Roll out the remainder, spread with butter, sprinkle the butter with flour, and roll it up. Roll this out again about a half an inch thick, and cut a strip and lay around the edge of the dish, first wetting the dough in the dish with milk to make it adhere. Fill the dish with the parboiled chicken. It is a good plan to put a good-sized bone in the centre of the dish to raise the top crust from the chicken and give more room for the liquor. Or a small cup may be inverted in the centre, cutting an X in the crust and bringing the points up around the sides of the cup to hold the gravy.
Season the liquor in which the chicken was cooked with pepper and more salt if necessary. Add a teaspoonful of flour rubbed smooth with a little of the liquor. Let this boil up sufficiently to allow the flour to thicken, pour it over the chicken, having enough to nearly cover it. Put generous pieces of butter over the top, and cover with the paste. Cut slashes in the cover to allow the escape of steam, moisten the edges of the pastry lining well with milk to ensure the adhering of the cover, press together and trim the edge not too closely, pushing the paste up well together, rather thickening it at the edges. Put small bits of butter on the top, and bake two hours in a moderate oven.
A two-crust deep-dish chicken pie of the late nineteenth century, built on parboiled birds and their own thickened broth. Most of the technique holds up; the baking time does not.
- The hinge: enough gravy, not too muchThe pie is filled with liquor "nearly" covering the chicken, and the recipe props the lid on a spare bone or an inverted cup to raise the top crust off the filling and, as it says, "give more room for the liquor" -- the cup version catching the gravy beneath the crust. Slashes in the cover let the steam out.
- "Nappy"A round earthenware dish, here a deep one, of the sort used both for baking and serving. A stoneware or ceramic casserole of roughly 2 1/2 to 3 quarts stands in for it.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken as somewhere around 350 to 375F. At that heat, two hours is longer than the pie needs, since the chicken is already cooked through from parboiling. Bake 45 to 60 minutes, until the crust is well browned and the gravy bubbles at the slashes.
- Two chickensTwo birds of about 3 to 3 1/2 lb each, or a single 5 lb bird plus extra thighs, will fill a large deep dish. The recipe says only to parboil until tender -- reckon on 25 to 35 minutes in well-salted water -- then pull the larger bones as directed.
- The rolled-in butterSpreading the rested paste with butter, dusting with flour, rolling it up and re-rolling is a rough puff. Keep the butter cold and work quickly; if it softens into the dough the layers are lost and you have plain short pastry.
- Thickening the liquorOne teaspoonful of flour to the whole quantity of broth gives a very thin gravy by modern taste. Two to three tablespoons of flour per quart of liquor, cooked a full minute after it comes to the boil, gives a sauce that still runs but coats the meat.
- YieldA pie this size serves six to eight. Let it stand 15 minutes before cutting so the gravy settles.
Chicken pie in this form is domestic American cooking of the later nineteenth century, and it reads as such: the bird is boiled first and the broth becomes the sauce, so nothing from a whole fowl is wasted. Propping the lid on a spare bone or an inverted cup is an older kitchen trick, found in English deep pies, where the space beneath the crust holds the liquor and keeps the pastry from stewing. The long stated bake is consistent with wood- and coal-fired ranges of uneven heat, where generous time was allowed rather than a measured temperature.