Grouse Pie
INGREDIENTS for medium-sized pie.-2 birds; cayenne, salt and pepper to taste; 1 lb. of rump-steak, 1/2 pint of well-seasoned broth, puff-paste.
AVERAGE COST, 6s.
Line the bottom of a pie-dish with the rump-steak cut into neat pieces, and, should the grouse be large, cut them into joints; but if small, they may may be laid in the pie whole; season highly with salt, cayenne and black pepper; pour in the broth, and cover with a puff-paste; brush the crust over with the yolk of an egg, and bake from to 1 hour. If the grouse is cut into joints, the backbones and trimmings will make the gravy, by stewing them with an onion, a little sherry, a bunch of herbs, and a blade of mace; this should be poured in after the pie is baked, GROUSE SALAD.
TIME.- to 1 hour.
SEASONABLE from the 12th of August to the beginning of December.
A plain Victorian game pie: seasoned grouse over beefsteak, a puff-paste lid, and a separate gravy added after baking. The hinge is that gravy — the broth in the dish is only enough to keep the meat moist, and the finished pie is flooded through a hole in the crust once it comes out of the oven.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no oven direction. As a modern reconstruction, start at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set and lift the pastry, then drop to 350F for the remainder so the birds and steak cook through without the crust burning.
- The lost timeThe stated time has dropped its opening fraction. For a medium pie-dish, three-quarters of an hour to an hour is the sensible reading, jointed birds toward the shorter end.
- Rump-steakBritish rump is closest to the American top sirloin. Cut it into neat pieces; its job is to give body and juice under the game.
- Sourcing the birdsRed grouse is a wild shot bird sold only in season and rarely outside Britain. Two grouse are roughly 1 1/2 lb of bird; two guinea fowl legs and breasts, or four quail, stand in without changing the method. Whatever you use, run your fingers over the flesh for lead shot before it goes in the dish.
- Hanging and ageVictorian game was generally well hung and strong-flavoured; modern birds are usually sold young and barely aged, so the recipe's cayenne and pepper can be pulled back unless you want the seasoning to lead.
- The after-gravyStew the backbones and trimmings with an onion, herbs, a blade of mace and a splash of sherry while the pie bakes, strain, and pour it in hot as soon as the pie leaves the oven; the recipe does not say by what means, but a vent in the crust is the usual one. Note that the dish already takes half a pint of broth before the crust goes on — the after-gravy is in addition to that.
- Egg washYolk alone gives a deep colour but scorches at the higher heat; thin it with a teaspoon of water or milk.
- Yield and costA medium pie-dish of this kind serves four to six. The 6s. average cost is Victorian money for two wild birds and a pound of beef, and reflects a period when grouse was a luxury priced by the brace.
The dates in the last line are the recipe's real anchor: 12th August is the opening of the red grouse season in Britain, still known as the Glorious Twelfth, and "the beginning of December" sits at the close of the legal season, by which point the birds were in any case considered past eating. Household books of Mrs Beeton's era organised game entries around those legal seasons because there was no other way to get grouse. The construction of the pie, with a layer of beefsteak beneath the game, is thoroughly conventional for the period: lean wild birds give little fat and less gelatine, so the beef supplied both, while the trimmings-and-mace gravy poured in after baking kept the puff paste crisp. Mace and sherry in a game gravy were standard seasonings inherited from eighteenth-century English cookery rather than anything particular to grouse.