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Giblet Pie
Prepare and stew three or four sets of giblets and when they are done place them in a dish with the meat from the neck and pinions, arranging them in layers with a few slices of boiled bacon between; pour in a little gravy, cover the dish with a good pie-crust and put it in the oven for thirty minutes. If desired mashed potatoes may be put on the top instead of pie-crust and a little mushroom or walnut catsup poured into the dish. Celery and sweet herbs are sometimes used.
A frugal pie built from the parts left over when birds are drawn and trussed. The whole thing hinges on cooking the giblets properly before they ever meet the crust, since thirty minutes in the oven only sets the pastry.
- What a "set" of giblets isThe heart, gizzard, liver and neck from one bird, plus in older butchery the pinions (wing tips) and sometimes the feet. Three or four sets means the trimmings from three or four birds; supermarket giblet packs are usually one set, and turkey or goose giblets give a much richer result than chicken.
- Stew the tough parts separatelyGizzards, hearts, necks and pinions want 1 to 1½ hours at a bare simmer with an onion, a bay leaf and peppercorns. Livers go in for the last five minutes only, or they turn grainy and make the gravy bitter.
- The gravy is the stewing liquorStrain it, reduce it, and thicken with a little flour-and-butter roux. "A little gravy" means enough to keep the meat moist, not enough to boil up under the lid and lift the crust.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven temperature, only thirty minutes. Everything inside is already cooked, so the timing is about the pastry alone; around 425F for the first 15 minutes, then 375F, on a lower shelf so the base of the crust sets, suits a pastry-topped pie.
- Boiled baconA piece of unsmoked bacon or gammon simmered until tender and sliced, not fried streaky rashers. Its job is fat and salt between the layers; a mild pancetta or a thick slice of ham hock will do the same.
- Walnut catsupA thin, dark, salty condiment of green walnuts, now hard to find outside specialist grocers. Mushroom ketchup is still made; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce or a dash of anchovy sauce gives a comparable savory lift.
- The potato-topped versionWith mashed potatoes instead of pastry the dish becomes a shepherd's-pie treatment and wants only 25 to 30 minutes at 400F to brown, brushed with butter.
- YieldThree or four sets of giblets, layered in a deep dish, should serve about four as a main course.
Giblet pie belongs to the older economy of the kitchen, when a bird arrived whole and nothing about it was thrown away: the liver went to a sauce or a stuffing, the neck and gizzard to stock, and the accumulated odds and ends to a pie. The word giblet comes into English from Old French gibelet, whose exact sense is uncertain but which appears to have denoted a dish of game; giblet pie appears in English cookery books well before the nineteenth century, often as a Michaelmas or Christmas dish made from the goose. Its presence in Oscar Tschirky's book is a reminder that even a hotel famous for terrapin and canvasback ran on thrift: a house roasting poultry by the dozen produced giblets in quantity. The walnut and mushroom ketchups suggested at the end were standard bottled savories of the period, doing the work now done by Worcestershire sauce.