Giblet Pie
INGREDIENTS for moderate-sized pie. A set of duck or goose giblets, 1 lb. of rump-steak, 1 onion, ½ teaspoonful of whole black pepper, a bunch of savoury herbs, plain crust. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the giblets, 1s. 6d. Clean and put the giblets into a stewpan with an onion, whole pepper and a bunch of savoury herbs; add rather more than a pint of water, and simmer gently for about 1½ hour. Take them out. let them cool, and cut them into pieces; line the bottom of a pie dish with a few pieces of rumpsteak; add a layer of giblets and a few more pieces of steak; season with pepper in cold water to preserve the colour, and boil them in the syrup until transparent; but be careful not to let them break. Put the pieces of apples into jars, pour over the syrup, and carefully exclude the air, by well covering them.
It will remain good some time, if kept in a dry place.
GINGER.
TIME.-5 to 10 minutes to boil the syrup; about 1/2 hour to simmer the apples.
SEASONABLE. Make this in September, October or November, GINGER-BEER.
A Victorian pie built on the parts of the bird most modern shops throw away, stretched with beefsteak. The giblet stew is the whole foundation: it seasons the meat and supplies the gravy, so it should not be rushed.
- What a "set of giblets" isThe neck, gizzard, heart and often the pinions and cleaned feet of one bird; the liver was frequently included too, though it can turn bitter in a long stew and is easily kept back for something else. Chicken giblets will stand in where goose or duck parts cannot be had loose.
- Rump steakBritish rump corresponds roughly to what is sold in the US as top sirloin. Cut it into thin slices or 1-inch dice; it is there for body and gravy rather than tenderness, and an hour under a crust will do it no harm.
- The pepper measureThe quantity of whole black pepper printed here is unclear. Half a teaspoon of peppercorns suits a pie of this size; tie them with the herbs in muslin so they can be lifted out before the pie is assembled.
- The initial simmerAn hour and a half at a bare tremble, not a boil — gizzard and pinion are tough working muscle and only long gentle heat softens them. Cool the giblets in their liquor before cutting, and keep every drop of the stock.
- Stock into the pieThe text as printed breaks off before the pie is finished, so the liquor is not accounted for; add some of the strained cooking liquor before the crust goes on and reserve the rest to pour in hot through a vent afterwards. Too much liquid at the start lifts and sogs the pastry.
- Crust and oven"Plain crust" means a plain short crust rather than puff. The recipe as printed gives no baking time or oven at all; on a modern oven, a hot start to set and colour the pastry followed by a long moderate spell to finish the steak is the usual approach.
- YieldWith 1 lb of steak plus a set of giblets, a "moderate-sized pie" of this kind would serve about four as a main course.
Giblet pie belongs to the thrifty end of Victorian roasting: when a goose or a pair of ducks went to the spit, the neck, gizzard, heart and wing tips came off first and were too good to waste. Because giblets alone are lean and gelatinous rather than meaty, cooks bulked the dish out with a pound of beefsteak, which is why the pie reads as a beef-and-poultry hybrid. Mrs Beeton costs it "exclusive of the giblets" precisely because they were assumed to be a by-product of a bird already bought hrough through through the book, where the pie is judged on what it adds to the budget rather than what it contains. Goose giblet pie is often said to have been associated with Michaelmas and Christmas, when geese were killed in numbers and the offal had to be used within a day or two.