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Paste for Savory Pies
Boil about three ounces of lard, and two ounces of dripping with one teacupful of water. While this is hot, mix with it smooth sufficient flour to make a stiff paste. Knead it well and beat it with the rolling-pin till quite smooth. Knead it into a lump, and turn a pan over it until it is almost cold. Then roll it to a proper thickness on a floured board with a floured rolling-pin. Cut out a piece for the bottom of the pie, a piece for the top, and a long narrow piece to form the sides. Fasten the bottom to the sides by brushing egg over the edges and then pressing them well together, joining up the side edges in the same way. Fill the pie, then put on the cover, brushing the edges over with beaten egg, and pinching them together. If the pie is made in a tin mould, all the edges must be fastened together in just the same way. The tin must be well buttered before putting the paste in, and when the pie is baked it should be slipped out of the tin and put back into the oven to brown the sides, first brushing beaten egg all over.
This is hot water crust, the sturdy pastry built to stand on its own as the wall of a raised meat pie rather than to flake. Almost everything about handling it follows from one fact: it must be worked warm.
- Work it hotWork it warm -- Hot water crust is pliable while warm and cracks once it has gone cold and hard. Note that this recipe departs from the usual modern advice: it says to knead the paste into a lump and turn a pan over it 'until it is almost cold' before rolling. Take 'almost' seriously -- the paste should still be warm enough to bend without cracking, and covering it keeps it from drying and skinning while it firms.
- The missing flour quantityThe recipe gives fat and water but no flour, expecting the cook to judge "sufficient... to make a stiff paste." For 3 oz lard, 2 oz dripping and a teacupful of water, something in the region of 10-12 oz of plain flour is a reasonable starting point, though proportions in period hot water crusts vary a good deal. Add it in stages until the dough is stiff but not dry.
- A teacupfulA teacup in this period is roughly 6 fl oz, not the 8 oz measuring cup. Slightly less water gives a firmer, more manageable wall.
- DrippingBeef or pork dripping, the strained fat from roasting. Supermarket beef dripping or additional lard both work; butter alone makes a softer crust that slumps.
- OvenNo temperature is given. Raised pies are conventionally started hot, around 400-425F, to set the walls, then dropped to 350F for the long bake needed by the filling. Total time depends entirely on what goes inside.
- Egg wash as glueThe beaten egg here is structural as much as decorative. Every seam, base to side and side to lid, is sealed with it, and a poorly joined seam will leak juices and collapse.
- Browning out of the tinThe final step, slipping the baked pie from its buttered mould, glazing and returning it to the oven, dries and colours the pale sides. Give it 10-15 minutes at 400F and watch it; the pie is now unsupported.
- Vent the lidNot mentioned, but a steam hole in the centre of the cover is standard practice and prevents the top blowing off. It also lets you pour in stock or jelly after baking, as was usual with cold pies.
Hot water crust is one of the older surviving forms of English pastry, descended from the medieval "coffin" (from the Latin for basket) in which meat was baked and which was originally a container more than a food. Raised in a mould or free-hand around a wooden block, it holds its shape without a dish and travels well, which is why it became the standard casing for pork pies, game pies and the cold pies of hunt breakfasts and shooting lunches. Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection is a hotel maitre d'hotel's compendium rather than a personal cookbook, and stretches of it read straight out of the English domestic manuals of the day, right down to the teacupful and the dripping. Its presence in a Waldorf book reflects a New York kitchen still working largely within an Anglo-French tradition, where a savoury raised pie was expected on any respectable cold buffet.