No. 2556

Game Pie Dressed a la Lesage

Pate de Gibier Dresse a la Lesage

Prepare six pounds of cold pie paste, the same being described in No. 144; after it has well rested roll out three-quarters of it to three-eighths of an inch in thickness; raise the paste with the hands several times, leaving it rest between each; place it on a sheet of buttered paper, and when it attains the height of about six inches, is rounded and properly equalized, thicker on the bottom than on the top, then pinch on the outside a row toward the right, another toward the left, and wrap several strong sheets of buttered paper around and tie with several strings. Fill the bottom and sides with bards of fat pork, and on the bottom spread a layer of forcemeat made of three pounds of pork meat, one pound of young rabbit meat, four pounds of fat pork, six ounces of prepared No. 2 pie spices (No. 168), and ten egg-yolks. Having finely chopped and pounded all these ingredients together, spread a layer in the bottom of the pie, and over it place a boned pheasant with the inside meats larded with fat pork and ham, and seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, chopped parsley, chives and chopped bay leaf, and filled with some of this same forcemeat. Bone twelve woodcock and prepare them the same as the pheasant. Cut into three-sixteenth inch squares some carrots and onions; fry the onions first in butter, add the carrots and the woodcock intestines; moisten with a little broth and Madeira wine, and as soon as done (that is, when the moisture is thoroughly reduced) pound all finely and press through a sieve; let stand till cold, then mix into it some of the above forcemeat, adding eight ounces of cooked lean ham cut in one-eighth inch squares, and four ounces of chopped truffle peelings. Fill the boned woodcock, and in the center of each lay a small peeled truffle. Place eight of these birds around the pheasant, cover with more of the forcemeat, and in the center set the four remaining ones, with whole truffles laid around, also eight partridge fillets larded with lardons (No. 3, Fig. 52), and seasoned; cover with more of the forcemeat to form a dome, and on this lay thin slices of fat pork and a little thyme and bay leaf on top. Wet the edges of the pie, and lay over a cover of the rolled-out paste; fasten both together, cut the crust straight, equalize it and pinch it all around; make a chimney on the top, place several rows of noodle paste (No. 142) leaves on, and in the center arrange a noodle paste artichoke made as follows: Take a flat of paste about one-sixteenth of an inch thick, fold it in two three times, then roll it in a ball an inch and a quarter across, make two cross-shape incisions half an inch deep on the centre of the ball so as to divide it in eight parts partly open to represent an antichoke; egg over several times and bake in a moderate oven for three or four hours; leave it to cool partly, then fill the pie either with game fumet (No. 397) mixed with jelly or with chaudfroid (No. 594) made with essence of game (No. 397) or else with fresh butter and lard mixed, half and half. Filling it in this way the pie will keep much longer. It will take nearly twenty-four hours to thoroughly cool off a pie of this size.

← No. 2555 Duckling Pie a la Rouennaise Garnishings for Cold Dishes No. 2557 Goose Pie a la Adolphe Hardy—Fillets →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a hand-raised game pâté en croûte on a banquet scale — roughly fifteen pounds of meat inside a six-inch-tall freestanding crust. Nearly everything in it can still be done, but the sourcing and the timings need translating.

The hinge: raise the paste in stagesThe instruction to raise the paste "several times, leaving it rest between each" is the whole structure of the dish. The paste here is the book's cold pie paste (No. 144); a stiff paste of this kind stretches only so far before it slumps or tears, and each rest lets the dough relax so the next lift holds. Keep the wall visibly thicker at the base than the rim, and keep the paper collar and strings tight, or the sides will bow outward under the weight of the forcemeat.
Woodcock cannot be boughtIn the United States woodcock are migratory game birds protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; they may be taken in season by licensed hunters but not sold. Twelve of them, plus their intestines, is a hunter's larder, not a shopping list. Farmed pheasant, partridge and guinea fowl are all commercially available; wild woodcock is not.
The trail"Woodcock intestines" means the trail — the bird is traditionally cooked undrawn, and the trail, cooked down with onion, carrot, broth and Madeira and sieved, is what gives this stuffing its particular flavour. It is not an optional garnish; remove it and the forcemeat becomes ordinary pork and rabbit.
Bards and lardonsBards are thin sheets of back fat used to line the mould and cover the dome; lardons are strips of the same fat threaded through lean meat with a larding needle. Ask a butcher for fresh (not cured) pork back fat. Sliced fatback or unsalted salt pork, well rinsed and blanched, is the usual substitute.
The spice quantitySix ounces of the book's No. 2 pie spice sounds alarming until you note it seasons about eight pounds of forcemeat plus everything it fills — roughly three-quarters of an ounce of mixed spice and salt per pound. The blend itself is only cross-referenced (No. 168) and not given here, so its exact make-up is unknown: fry a spoonful of the mix and taste before committing.
"Moderate oven," three to four hours"Moderate" is usually read as somewhere in the region of 325-350F, and for a pie this deep the time is plausible — but bake to temperature, not the clock. The centre of a pork-based forcemeat should reach 160F. A probe down the chimney is the only reliable check; the crust will be dark long before the middle is done, so tent it with foil.
Fumet, chaudfroid and the fat sealGame fumet (No. 397) is a concentrated game stock; chaudfroid here is that essence set with aspic. Either is poured warm down the chimney after baking to fill the gap left as the meat shrinks. The half-butter, half-lard alternative is a fat seal in the confit tradition — it excludes air, and that is what the note about keeping "much longer" means. It is not a substitute for refrigeration; treat the finished pie as you would any cooked pâté and keep it below 40F.
The coolingTwenty-four hours to cool is not an exaggeration for a mass this size, but it should not be spent on a counter. Cool it in a cold room or a refrigerator with air circulating around it; the interior passes slowly through the temperature range where bacteria multiply, and thickness is exactly what makes that slow.
Yield and scalingSix pounds of paste and fifteen-odd pounds of filling will serve forty or more in thin slices, cold. Scaled down to a single boned pheasant with a pound or two of forcemeat in a hinged pâté mould, the same method makes a workable dish for a dozen people.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this pie belongs to its most ceremonial register: the cold buffet centrepiece, built to be looked at as much as eaten, crowned with a sculpted noodle-paste artichoke and pinched borders. The pâté en croûte of layered game was a set piece of nineteenth-century French grande cuisine, descended from the medieval coffin pie in which pastry served chiefly as a baking vessel and a preservative case, though such crusts were not invariably left uneaten; by Ranhofer's day the crust was edible but still functional, and the fat or aspic poured in through the chimney did the real work of keeping. Names like "à la Lesage" were the period's way of dedicating a composition to a patron, a colleague or a figure of note — the specific Lesage intended here is not identified in the book, and any attribution would be guesswork. What the recipe documents most plainly is a vanished supply chain: twelve woodcock, a pheasant and partridges were all ordinary market goods in New York before the Lacey Act of 1900 and the migratory bird treaties that followed ended the commercial trade in wild game.