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Meat, Game, and Fish Pies
Or, for common purposes, beat the yolk of an egg and some melted butter well together, wash the tarts with a feather, and sift sugar over as they are put in the oven. 746. TO GLAZE savoury pies and pasties, if they are required to look well, brush over the crust with the yolk of egg well beaten, before putting them in the oven.
Two short glazing directions: a sweetened yolk-and-butter wash for tarts, and a plain beaten yolk for savoury pies. Both still work exactly as described.
- ProportionsThe original gives none. One yolk to about a teaspoon of melted butter is enough to glaze a dozen small tarts; loosen with a teaspoon of water or cream if it drags on the pastry.
- The featherFeathers were a common domestic pastry brush, as the original direction shows. A soft silicone or natural-bristle brush does the same job; the point is a light touch that does not tear or compress the raw pastry edge.
- Keep it off the cut edgesThis is the instruction that matters for puff and flaky pastry. Glaze the top surface only, since egg running down the layered sides seals them together and stops the pastry rising.
- Sugar at the door of the ovenSifting sugar on just as the tarts go in is deliberate: the wet glaze holds it, and the sugar catches and crusts. Caster or granulated both work; icing sugar dissolves into the glaze and disappears.
- Yolk alone versus yolk and butterYolk on its own gives the deepest brown gloss and is what the savoury direction calls for. Adding butter softens the colour slightly and suits sweet tarts, where a very dark glaze looks scorched.
- OvenThe original names no heat. Egg glaze browns fast: check at the halfway point and cover loosely with foil if the top is colouring well ahead of the base.
- Second coatFor raised pies and pasties baked long and slow, a second brushing partway through gives a more even, lacquered finish.
Egg wash is a long-standing finishing touch in pastry work, and here it appears as a general direction appended to a class of recipes rather than to an individual dish. The phrasing is telling on two counts: the feather, still in use as a domestic pastry brush, and the frank admission that the glaze is for pies "required to look well."