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Beef Pot-Pie
Cut into pieces of equal size some coarse fat beef, put in a saucepan with cold water, and stew for about two hours with the lid on the pan; add a few slices of fat pork or bacon, an onion, salt and pepper to taste, and a thickening of flour and water; turn into a dish, lined with biscuit dough, such as is used for dumplings, cover over with more of the dough, and bake in a quick oven until done. Turn out on a dish, and serve.
A plain nineteenth-century meat pie: the beef is fully stewed first, then baked inside a biscuit-dough crust. The recipe assumes a cook who knows the doughs and the fire, so most of the work is filling in numbers.
- The hinge: cool the fillingThe recipe turns the stew straight into the lined dish, but very hot gravy will soften a raw biscuit bottom before the oven can set it. Letting the beef and gravy cool to lukewarm, or at least stop steaming, gives a firmer base.
- "Quick oven"Roughly 400-450F. Biscuit dough needs that heat to rise and brown; the filling is already cooked, so the bake is only about 25-35 minutes, until the top crust is set and golden.
- "Coarse fat beef"Chuck, shin or short rib — a well-marbled cut with connective tissue. Figure about 2 lb for a family-sized pie. Modern lean stew meat will be dry and stringy after two hours.
- Two hours, lid onCold water barely covering, brought up slowly and held at a bare simmer. Two hours is right for chuck; shin may want closer to three. The beef should be fork-tender before it goes near the dough.
- Fat pork or baconPeriod "fat salt pork" was much saltier than today's streaky bacon. Two or three thin slices are plenty, and salt the stew only after they have gone in.
- Thickening of flour and waterRoughly 2 tablespoons flour whisked smooth into 1/4 cup cold water per 2 cups of liquid, stirred in and simmered a few minutes to lose the raw taste. Aim for gravy thick enough to coat a spoon, not a pourable broth.
- Biscuit dough for dumplingsA soft baking-powder dough — about 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 4 tablespoons fat, and enough milk to make it just handleable. Pat it out rather than rolling it thin; roll about 1/2 inch.
- "Turn out on a dish"Inverting a deep pie of hot gravy is a Victorian habit worth skipping. Bake in a straight-sided baking dish and serve from it by the spoonful.
- YieldAbout 4 to 6 servings, with potatoes or a green vegetable alongside. The original gives no quantities at all, so scale by the size of your dish.
Pot-pie in nineteenth-century American usage generally meant meat stewed in its own gravy and enclosed in a lined biscuit crust, sometimes steamed or boiled rather than baked — often contrasted with the pastry-topped English pie. The dough here is the same soft baking-powder mixture used for dumplings, which is the giveaway: this is a dumpling stew that has been arranged in a dish and browned. That such a frankly domestic dish sits in a book bearing the name of a Waldorf ma"tre d'h"tel says something about the compilation itself, which gathers plain American household cooking alongside hotel and French dishes, and about the period's assumption that any competent reader already knew what a quick oven and a biscuit dough were.