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Giblet Pie
756. After very nicely cleaning geese or duck giblets, stew them with a small quantity of water, onion, black pepper, and a bunch of sweet herbs, till nearly done; let them grow cold, and, if not enough to fill the dish, lay a beef, veal, or two or three mutton steaks at bottom; put the liquor of the stew in the dish with the above, and cover with short crust or puff paste (see pars. 725 and 732). When the pie is baked, pour into it a large tea-cupful of cream. Sliced potatoes added to it eat extremely well, and some people add to it slices of apple.
A working Victorian pie built on the parts of the bird left over after roasting. Two things decide whether it succeeds: the giblets must go into the dish completely cold, and the cream goes in after baking, not before.
- What giblets areNeck, gizzard, heart and wing tips, plus the liver if you want it. Butchers rarely display them now but will usually supply them on request; frozen turkey or chicken giblets are a reasonable stand-in. Skip the liver in the stewing pot, as it turns the liquor bitter over a long simmer.
- Sweet herbsA bunch of parsley, thyme and a bay leaf, tied. The Victorian phrase means an aromatic bundle, not anything sugared.
- Stew them properly firstGizzards and necks are dense working muscle and want 1 to 1.5 hours at a bare simmer before they are "nearly done". Barely cover with water so the liquor stays concentrated enough to serve as the pie's gravy.
- Cold before it goes under pastryThis is the hinge. Warm filling melts the butter in short crust or puff before the oven can set it, and the underside turns to paste. Chill the stewed giblets and their liquor thoroughly, and skim the fat that sets on top.
- The steaks at the bottomThese go in raw and need the full bake to become tender, so cut them thin, no more than half an inch, and keep them in a single layer. Beef or mutton will give a much darker, stronger gravy than veal.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Start at 425F for 15 to 20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then drop to 350F for a further 45 minutes to an hour so the raw steak underneath cooks through.
- The creamA large tea-cupful is hard to fix exactly; a teacupful is usually reckoned at about a quarter-pint, so allow roughly 5 to 7 fl oz. Pour it into a vent hole in the crust as soon as the pie leaves the oven and tilt the dish to distribute it. Warming the cream first is a sensible precaution.
- Potatoes and appleSlice the potatoes thin, no thicker than an eighth of an inch, or they will still be firm when the pastry is done. A single tart apple, sliced, is enough for a family-sized dish; more and the pie reads as sweet.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities, only 'if not enough to fill the dish'; giblets plus a few steaks would suit roughly four to six as a main course with a green vegetable.