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Goose Pie
Cut the meat from the bones of a cold, cooked goose, put the bones with skin and stuffing (if any) into a saucepan with a little water and boil for two hours. Sufficient water should be used so that when boiled there will be at least one pint of gravy. Let it cool and skim off the fat. Put a layer of apple sauce at the bottom of a dish, lay the meat on this, cover it over with another layer of sauce, and fill the dish up with as much gravy as it will conveniently hold. Sprinkle over with pepper and salt, cover the dish with a good suet crust and bake in a moderate oven until the crust is done. If uncooked meat is used it should be first stewed for an hour or so. Boiled and minced onions may be used in place of the apple sauce if desired.
A thrifty second-day dish built on a goose carcass, closer to a English raised pie tradition than to anything roasted fresh. The whole thing hinges on the stock: a thin, greasy pint will flood the filling and steam the crust from below.
- Moderate oven350F. The filling is already cooked, so bake only until the suet crust is risen, firm and browned, roughly 45 minutes to an hour for a deep dish.
- Skim the fat seriouslyGoose renders a great deal of fat. Chill the stock until the fat sets in a solid cap and lift it off whole; a quarter inch of liquid fat left in will make the pie greasy and keep the crust pale. Save the fat for potatoes.
- Suet crustStandard proportions are 2 cups flour, 1 cup shredded beef suet, 1 teaspoon salt, 2 teaspoons baking powder, and cold water to a soft dough. Frozen grated butter works if suet is unavailable, though the texture is less spongy. Roll it about a third of an inch thick and cut a vent.
- Do not overfill"As much gravy as it will conveniently hold" implies leaving some headroom below the rim. Filled too high, the gravy can boil up through the vent and lift the crust.
- Apple sauceUse unsweetened or barely sweetened sauce, thick rather than loose. Modern jarred apple sauce is sugared enough to read as dessert against the goose; the onion version in the last line is the more savoury option.
- Uncooked meatThe recipe's "an hour or so" is approximate. Tougher leg and thigh meat may want longer at a bare simmer before going into the dish, since the baking time only sets the crust.
- YieldThe meat from one goose fills a 2 to 3 quart dish and serves six to eight. It cuts best warm rather than straight from the oven, once the gravy has thickened slightly.
Goose pie belongs to the long English tradition of turning cold roast birds into a second, hot meal under a crust, and the type is old enough that Yorkshire Christmas pie, with its nested birds, was already famous by the eighteenth century. The suet crust here marks it as the domestic rather than the grand version: a paste of flour and beef suet was a common covering in British kitchens, cheap, filling, and more forgiving of a wet filling than butter pastry. The pairing of goose with apple, and the offered substitution of minced onion, reflects the familiar logic that a fatty bird wants either acid or allium against it.