Salmon Pie

Cut four pounds of fresh salmon meat into large fillets; season them with salt and pepper, and put them in a vessel with two or three raw truffles also cut in fillets; pour over a little Madeira wine and leave to macerate for one hour. With some raw pike or gurnet, the salmon parings, panada, butter or veal udder and egg-yolks prepare a delicate forcemeat (No. 90), and when strained place it in a vessel to beat smooth and mix in with it a few spoonfuls of cooked fine herbs (No. 385), and the fish marinade. Butter an oblong metal pie mold selected proportionately to the quantity of fish and forcemeat, lay it on a baking sheet covered with paper and line it with cold pie paste (No. 144). Mask the bottom and sides of this paste with a layer of the forcemeat and in the hollow center dress the fillets of salmon and truffles, alternated by layers of forcemeat; the mold should be full so that when cooked there remains little or no empty space (the top layer must be of the forcemeat). Wet the edges of the paste and cover over with a flat of the same, fastening it on the edges; then cut away the paste on a level with the mold and pinch it all around. Cover the top surface above the border with a fake cover--meaning a simple layer of puff paste (No. 146) cut the same shape as the top of the pie--and in the center of this make a small opening; egg over and decorate the top with designs made with the tip of a small knife, and cook for an hour and a half in a moderate oven, being careful to cover the paste with paper as soon as it becomes dry. A quarter of an hour after the pie has been removed from the oven pour into the hole on top a few spoonfuls of good jelly (No. 103) mixed with fish essence (No. 395) and reduced to a half-glaze, also a few spoonfuls of Madeira wine. Let it get cold for ten hours. At the last moment cut the pie into slices, and dress these, one overlapping the other on a long dish, and surround with chopped jelly and jelly croutons.