Potato Pie
INGREDIENTS for dish for 3 persons.-1 lb. tin of roast mutton, 2 lbs. of potatoes, 2 oz. of butter, 2 onions, a little sauce, milk, seasoning, bread-crumbs.
AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Turn out the meat from the tin, taking off most of the fat, then boil and mash the potatoes with a little milk and butter; then slice the onions, and fry them in the mutton fat. Butter a pie-dish, line it with the potatoes, next a layer of mutton, cut in small pieces and well seasoned, then a few onions, and so on till the dish is full, scattering a few bread-crumbs and small pieces over the top, and bake.
TIME.-20 minutes to bake.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Potato Pie. (Vegetarian Recipe.)- INGREDIENTS for pie for 2 or 3 persons.- 1 lb. of potatoes, a small stick of celery, 1. onion, 1 oz. of sago, 1 oz. of butter, paste to cover the pie, a littte milk. AVERAGE COST, 7d.
Fry the onion in a little butter, and fill a pie-dish with it and the celery, and potatoes sliced, strewing in between the layers the sago and seasoning of pepper and salt. Fill up the dish with milk, and cover with a paste; then bake in 2 good paste; then bake in a good oven for an hour.
TIME.-1 hour to bake.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Two thrifty pies under one heading: a shepherd's-pie variant built from a tin of cooked mutton, and a vegetarian pie thickened with sago under a pastry lid. Both assume you already have the components to hand.
- Tinned roast muttonA 1 lb tin of cooked mutton is no longer a supermarket item. Use about 1 lb of leftover roast lamb or mutton cut small, with a few spoonfuls of gravy or stock to keep it moist, and a little dripping or butter in place of the tinned fat for frying the onions.
- "A little sauce"The recipe does not say which. A dash of a bottled brown sauce, mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire sauce is the likely intention and does the job in a teaspoon or so.
- Oven heatThe meat pie carries no oven instruction, only "bake" for 20 minutes; since it is reheating and browning already-cooked food, around 200C/400F is a reasonable reading. The vegetarian pie calls for "a good oven" for a full hour: something like 200C/400F to set the pastry, then dropping to 180C/350F so the sliced potato cooks through without the crust burning.
- Sago as thickenerAn ounce of pearl sago scattered between the layers absorbs the milk and sets it into a soft, slightly gluey sauce. It is still sold in the baking aisle; short-grain tapioca behaves much the same. A tablespoon of flour is the modern substitute if you want a plainer sauce.
- Slice the potatoes thinIn the vegetarian pie the potatoes are raw when they go in. Cut them no thicker than 3 mm or they will still be firm when the pastry is done, and pour in enough milk to come nearly level with the top layer.
- "Paste to cover"The recipe names no particular paste. A plain shortcrust suits; roughly 6 oz flour to 3 oz fat makes enough for a small pie dish, and a sheet of bought shortcrust is a fair stand-in.
- SeasoningNeither version specifies quantities, and both are bland without help. Season the mutton layers firmly with salt and pepper, and the vegetarian pie needs salt in every layer since potato, celery and sago contribute almost none.
- YieldAs written the meat pie serves three and the vegetarian pie two or three. The vegetarian pie suits a small dish of about 1 to 1.5 pints; the meat pie, with 2 lbs of potatoes as well as the mutton, needs a larger one.
Both entries belong to the era of the tinned-meat larder. Australian and New Zealand canned mutton reached British shops in growing quantities from the later nineteenth century and was cheap enough that a household could keep a tin against a day when there was no time to cook; recipe writers responded with ways to disguise it. The vegetarian version alongside it reflects the Victorian and Edwardian vegetarian movement, organised in Britain from the 1840s, whose cooks leaned on sago, tapioca and cornflour to give body to milk-based dishes without meat stock. The costings, one and threepence against sevenpence, were part of the book's practical appeal: they let a housekeeper see at a glance what dinner would cost her.