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Bird and Veal Pie
Line a deep baking dish with seasoned veal cutlets, place over them thin strips of raw ham. Pluck, empty, singe, and quarter birds if large, leave them whole if small. Season and rub with butter. Pack close together on top of the ham, pour in about 2 cups of meat broth. Place a strip of light pastry around the edge of the dish, lay a cover of pastry over, piercing it in several places and pinching its edges to the strip, brush with egg yolk and bake about 1 hour. If the pie browns too fast lay paper over it.
A raised-crust game pie of the older English type, built in a deep dish rather than a pastry case. The original gives no oven temperature and only a rough time, so the numbers below fill the gaps.
- Oven and timingThe original gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F, suits the hour it calls for. Small birds should be done in that hour; large birds cut in quarters, or a deep dish packed tightly, may want longer. The pastry lid insulates the filling, so check that the meat has reached 165F at the centre rather than trusting the clock.
- The pastry stripThis is the hinge of the construction. A band of pastry pressed onto the wet rim of the dish gives the lid something to grip; without it the crust shrinks and slides into the broth as the filling settles. Moisten the rim, lay the strip, then seal the lid to the strip rather than to the dish.
- "Light pastry"The term is not defined here; a plain short crust or a flaky rough-puff, rolled fairly thin, will do. Whatever is used has to hold up under an hour of steam from below.
- Raw hamAn uncooked cured ham -- prosciutto, jambon de Bayonne, or a domestic country ham -- sliced thin. Ordinary wet-cured deli ham is already cooked and will turn to string.
- BirdsQuail, dove, woodcock, snipe and small pigeon go in whole; partridge, grouse and larger pigeon should be quartered as directed. Check that the species is legal to take and possess where you are. Shot birds need going over with your fingers for pellets, and wild game should be well chilled and handled like any raw poultry.
- Veal cutletsThin cutlets, pounded and laid to cover the base of the dish. The recipe calls for them seasoned, as it does the birds.
- Meat brothTwo cups is enough to come partway up the birds, not to submerge them. A strong veal or game stock is best; if you have the carcasses and giblets, simmer them first. The liquid should be well flavoured, as it becomes the sauce.
- BrowningThe paper the recipe calls for is simply a loose sheet of parchment or foil laid over the crust once it has coloured. Do not seal it down or the steam will soften what you have just browned.
- YieldDepends entirely on the size of the dish and the birds, neither of which the recipe specifies. It is as good cold the next day, when the broth has set to a light jelly.
History: Game pies of this shape belong to a long English and Anglo-American tradition in which cheap, moist meat lines the dish and lean wild birds sit on top: the veal and the raw ham serve to baste the game, which has little fat of its own and dries out quickly under a crust. Similar logic lies behind the layered pork-and-game pies of the raised-crust bakers, and pigeon pies are common in nineteenth-century household manuals. The recipe assumes a cook working with a mixed bag rather than a single named species. The paper laid over a too-brown crust is a standard trick of wood- and coal-fired baking, where the heat could not readily be turned down.