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Goose Pie, Mrs. Nicoll
Soak a half pound California prunes in cold water for six hours, drain, remove stones and place prunes on a plate. Add a tablespoon powdered sugar and two saltspoons cinnamon, mix well in seasoning and place on plate until required. Pick all the meat off goose left over from last night's dinner and cut into small square pieces. Cut into same shape two ounces lean cooked ham, twelve canned mushrooms, and keep on a plate. Clean the goose's bones, crack in pieces with a cleaver, then place in a saucepan with four sliced shallots, a half bean garlic, two branches chervil and two branches parsley. Pour in two gills each demi-glace and tomato sauce, mix well and let boil for forty minutes. Strain sauce through a strainer into another saucepan, then add goose, ham and mushrooms, a saltspoon cayenne pepper, saltspoon grated nutmeg, half teaspoon chopped tarragon, two cold boiled potatoes cut in exceedingly small pieces, mix well and cook for thirty minutes, mixing once in a while. Add two tablespoons bread crumbs, one egg yolk, sharply mix while heating for two minutes, and remove to a table. Lightly butter a deep pie plate, prepare pie paste, divide paste in two, roll out both on a floured table to size of plate, then line plate with a layer of paste. Place hash at bottom, arrange prunes on top, egg edges, then cover with other layer of paste. Press both edges together, lightly trim egg surface, make a few light incisions on top, set in oven for forty minutes, remove, glide pie on a dish and send to table.
A leftover-goose pie in the French service style, written for a cook who already has stock, demi-glace and pie paste on hand. Two things need settling before you start: the oven temperature, which the original never gives, and the sauce, which is the whole structure of the filling.
- Demi-glace is the hingeTwo gills (one cup) of demi-glace simmered with the cracked bones is what turns chopped leftovers into a pie filling that slices. A thin canned gravy will weep into the pastry. Use a proper reduced brown sauce, or reduce good brown stock with a little roux until it coats a spoon.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills each of demi-glace and tomato sauce means one cup of each. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, which makes the cayenne and nutmeg quantities assertive but not absurd; the tarragon is half a teaspoon chopped, presumably fresh, though the recipe does not say.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A covered two-crust pie with a fully cooked filling wants 400F for the first 15 minutes to set the bottom, then 375F for the remainder of the forty minutes, until the crust is deep gold.
- The prunesPrunes of this period were dried harder than most packaged fruit today, which is presumably why a six-hour cold soak is called for. Today's packaged prunes are partly rehydrated; an hour in warm water is enough, and oversoaking turns them to paste. Halve them if they are large, or the sweet pockets overwhelm the slices.
- Half a bean of garlic'Bean' here means a clove, most likely an awkward rendering of the French gousse d'ail. Half a clove, in a sauce that boils forty minutes and is then strained, is background only.
- Chervil and shallotsChervil is worth seeking out for the anise note that ties the prunes to the goose, but it is fragile; parsley plus a pinch of the tarragon called for later will stand in. The shallots go into the bone sauce and are strained out, so slicing is enough.
- If you have no gooseThe recipe assumes yesterday's roast bird and its carcass. Duck legs, or the dark meat and frame of a roast turkey, behave the same way. Do not use only breast meat, which goes dry and stringy through the thirty-minute simmer in sauce.
- Egg yolk and crumbsThe two tablespoons of crumbs and the yolk are a binder; the recipe has them stirred in sharply while heating for two minutes only. Let the filling cool before it goes into the pastry, or the bottom crust will steam rather than bake.
- YieldThe recipe says only 'a deep pie plate'; a standard deep plate will take this filling and give roughly six servings. 'Egg edges' means brushing the rim with beaten egg to seal the two crusts, and the recipe eggs the top surface as well before the incisions are cut.
Goose pie belongs to a long English and northern European tradition of putting the remains of a roast bird under a crust with dried fruit, and the pairing of goose with prunes is older than either of these particular sauces; the fat of the bird wants something sharp and sweet against it. What marks this version as of its moment is the French professional scaffolding laid over a homely idea: a bone sauce built on demi-glace and tomato, shallots and chervil, a strained fond, a binding of yolk and crumbs. The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its recipes routinely assume a household with restaurant habits and a stockpot going. Who Mrs. Nicoll was, and why the dish carries her name, is not established; the personal attribution tells us little about who first made the pie.