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Raised Pie
We here present an original design, composed of five distinct plates, arranged and numbered for practical use. The illustration (page 367) represents a raised pie. It may be filled to suit the taste with either meats or game.
Figure 1 shows the pie complete, with top of savory or aspic jelly, surmounted by a butter lamb on a chopped parsley bed, and piped in butter. Cornucopias on each corner are filled with root flowers, making a horn of plenty.
The directions are as follows: Prepare the dough as usual for raised pie, and then determine the size. Next cut the base-not less than one-half inch in thickness-as per figure 2. Dock with a fork to prevent blistering, and lay aside on the pan ready for baking. Then prepare the oval bottom, as per figure 3, wash over with egg, and place evenly on center of the base. Now roll out dough, half an inch thick, in a narrow strip, long enough to go all round the oval bottom (measure outside of oval by passing a string around it); cut it straight and even, one inch wide. Wet the ends, which should be cut slanting to make them fit closely, and the lower edge, and wrap this around the oval piece which lies on the base, joining ends and bottom edge securely. The edge of the strip will rest on the base, with the oval piece inside. Now fill this case to within half an inch of the top with bran, place over it a thin cover of dough (with a small hole in the center); wash the outside (except the top, which only serves to keep the side in place, and is not used) with egg, and bake in a moderate oven until it takes on a fine chestnut brown. While cold, cut out top, turn out bran, and the shell is ready for filling. It is better to make the shell the day before using, so as to fill it at leisure. To make the cornucopias, fold up the dough the same as you would in making a paper cone, and also fill with bran. Bake them sepa rately from the pie. Now fill shell with meat or game, and next place the savory jelly (which should be ready cut in pieces one-half inch square) on the top, as per figure 6. Now mold a butter lamb and place on top of jelly, as per figure 7. Add the chopped parsley, as per figure 8; also place the cornucopia in position. Place the cut roots (see figure 4) one in each cornucopia (see figure 9); place a rim of sliced lemon on the top edge, as shown in figure 1, and add the small cut root flowers at base of the cornucopias, securing them with butter. Pipe the pie any design you choose, or, as in the design, using butter instead of sugar. A little parsley under each cut root flower on the cornucopias adds to the effect. Soften the butter by working it with a knife, not warming, adding a little yolk of egg to bring it to the required softness, and a little flour to toughen it. Figure 5 shows one of the cornucopias before it is placed on the shell. Serve cold, with a salad, on a large napkin, with a little parsley around it, The meat used for filling should always be cold. It is a summer dish, and looks well on the table.
The special directions for making the crust for raised pie are as Raised Pie. 1 (367) 368
This is a piece of table architecture as much as a dish: a free-standing hot-water-crust shell, baked hollow around a filling of bran, then loaded with cold cooked meat, set with aspic and dressed in butter piping and carved vegetables. The instructions assume you already have the raised-pie crust recipe (the text breaks off just as it begins) and that the meat filling is cooked separately.
- The dough it assumes"Dough as usual for raised pie" would conventionally mean a hot water crust — flour worked with boiling water and fat, handled warm so it stays pliable and sets rigid as it cools — though the book's own crust directions are cut off here, so this is inference rather than a stated recipe. Ordinary short or puff pastry will not stand up in a free-form case like this.
- Bran as blind-baking weightThe bran is a filler to hold the walls upright during baking, not an ingredient; it is tipped out and discarded. Dried beans, rice or ceramic pie weights over a parchment liner do the same job and are easier to clean out of the corners.
- Moderate ovenRead it as somewhere around 350°F (175°C); "moderate" in this period covers a range rather than a fixed figure. The shell wants to dry and colour slowly to a deep chestnut brown rather than take on colour before the walls have set; a hot oven will brown the outside while the seams are still soft.
- Dock the basePricking the half-inch base with a fork is the hinge of the whole build. If steam lifts the base into a blister, the oval wall sitting on it loses its seat and the case leans or splits.
- Seams and egg washEgg does double duty here: the oval bottom is washed with egg before it is set on the base, and the outside of the finished case is washed before baking. The strip's slanted ends and its lower edge, however, are simply wetted before joining. Press the joins firmly so the case holds its shape.
- Savory or aspic jellyA clarified, well-reduced meat stock set firm with gelatine, cut into half-inch dice once cold. Modern powdered or sheet gelatine works; aim for a jelly firm enough to hold its cut edges at room temperature, since it is decoration rather than sauce.
- "Root flowers" and the butter lambRoot vegetables carved into blossoms, secured with dabs of butter; the text does not say which roots. The butter for both the lamb and the piping is softened by working it with a knife — never by warming — with a little egg yolk to bring it to the required softness and a little flour to toughen it; warmed butter goes greasy and will not hold a piped line.
- Make it in stagesThe advice to bake the shell a day ahead is sound. The case needs to be cold and dry before filling, and the assembly with jelly, butter work and carved roots takes longer than the baking does.
- Cold meat means cooked and chilledThe filling is cooked meat or game, cooled thoroughly before it goes in. Assemble cold, keep the finished pie refrigerated until service, and do not leave a decorated pie standing on a summer table for hours — the aspic and the butter both suffer, and so does the meat.
Raised pies belong to a tradition that predates ovenproof dishes: the stiff hot-water crust was originally a "coffin," a self-supporting vessel that held and preserved the meat, and is often said to have become something anyone expected to eat only later. The technique had been absorbed into professional garde manger work, where a decorated cold pie was one of the standard set pieces on a buffet alongside galantines, moulded aspics and butter sculpture. What is distinctive here is the illustrated, numbered plates: this is a pattern to be copied, aimed at the ambitious household cook working from a book rather than an apprenticeship. The butter lamb, the cornucopias of carved roots and the rim of sliced lemon all point to the same late-nineteenth-century enthusiasm for food as tableau — the cook demonstrating skill in construction and ornament, with the eating almost incidental.