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Chicken Pie
Dress, clean, and cut up two fowls or chickens. Put in a stewpan with one-half onion, sprig of parsley, and bit of bay leaf; cover with boiling water, and cook slowly until tender. When chicken is half cooked, add one-half tablespoon salt and one-eighth teaspoon pepper. Remove chicken, strain stock, skim off fat, and then cook until reduced to four cups. Thicken stock with one-third cup flour diluted with enough cold water to pour easily. Place a small cup in centre of baking-dish, arrange around it pieces of chicken, removing some of the larger bones; pour over gravy, and cool. Cover with pie-crust in which several incisions have been made, that there may be an outlet for escape of steam and gases. Wet edge of crust and put around a rim, having rim come close to edge. Bake in a moderate oven until crust is well risen and browned. Roll remnants of pastry and cut in diamond-shaped pieces, bake, and serve with pie when reheated. If puff paste is used, it is best to bake top separately. 3 lb. chicken 1/3 cup butter 2 onions
A two-stage dish: the birds are stewed and the stock reduced to a proper gravy before anything meets pastry. The single thing that decides success is the filling being fully cooled before the crust goes on.
- Cool the filling firstWarm gravy melts the fat in the pastry before the oven can set it, and the bottom of the crust turns to paste. Fill the dish, then refrigerate until the gravy is set and cold.
- "Dress and clean"This means plucking, singeing and drawing a freshly killed bird. Buy two 3-3 1/2 lb chickens, cut into serving pieces, and start at "put in a stewpan."
- Fowl versus chickenA "fowl" was an older laying hen, tough and full of flavour, needing 2 to 3 hours of slow simmering. A modern supermarket chicken is tender in 45 to 60 minutes; test the thigh rather than trusting a clock.
- The inverted cupThe centre cup -- The small cup in the centre supports the crust so it cannot sag into the gravy; the recipe does not say whether it stands upright or inverted. Any ovenproof teacup or ramekin will serve. Steam escapes through the incisions cut in the lid, not through the cup.
- Moderate ovenRead that as roughly 350-375F. The filling is already cooked, so you are only baking pastry: around 30 to 40 minutes, until well risen and browned as the recipe directs.
- The stock and thickeningReduce the strained, skimmed stock to about the four cups called for, since the one-third cup flour is measured against that volume: much less and the gravy sets stiff, much more and it stays thin. Flour slaked in cold water gives a gravy that sets when chilled and loosens again in the oven.
- The pastry rimA separate strip of dough is laid around the wetted edge of the crust once the lid is on, brought close to the edge of the dish; it seals the pie and gives something to crimp against.
- The stray ingredient listThe line "3 lb. chicken, 1/3 cup butter, 2 onions" at the end does not match the method above, which calls for two birds, half an onion and no butter. Its origin is unclear; follow the instructions.
- YieldTwo chickens in a large baking dish serves eight generously. The diamond-shaped pastry scraps are baked separately and set around the dish at table.
Chicken pie of this kind is old English farmhouse cooking carried into the American kitchen: a bird is jointed, stewed, and rebuilt under a crust so that the tough parts of an ageing hen become tender and the cooking liquor becomes gravy. The cup in the centre and the slashed lid belong to a period when a cook was expected to raise pastry over a deep dish without a pie funnel. The note that puff paste is "best baked separately" reflects the difficulty of getting laminated dough to rise over a wet filling, and the diamonds of baked scrap pastry served alongside are a thrifty flourish. The instruction to vent "steam and gases" is a small period fossil of the era's phrasing.