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Veal and Ham Pie
1 1/2 pounds veal 2 hard cooked eggs 1/2 pound ham 1 tablespoon flour 1 teaspoon grated lemon rind 1 teaspoon powdered herbs, salt, pepper, red pepper and mace to taste 1 tablespoon chopped parsley Pastry or biscuit dough Stock Cut veal and ham into thin slices. Trimmings from roast may be used. Mix on plate the flour, salt, pepper, red pepper, mace, powdered herbs, and lemon rind, roll each piece of veal in this seasoning, and lay in deep casserole, alternately, layers of veal, ham, and eggs cut in slices; pile this in center of the dish, add one cupful of water, and parsley; cover with dough and bake in hot oven for one and a quarter hours. When baked, add a little well-seasoned stock. Serve hot or cold.
The ingredient list as printed has been mangled — the quantities for veal, ham, flour, lemon rind and eggs have dropped out, and the trailing "1 pound kidney 1 carrot" belongs to the steak-and-kidney recipe that followed. The method itself is complete enough to work from, but you are reconstructing the proportions.
- What the list should containThe method calls for veal, ham, hard-boiled eggs, flour, lemon rind, parsley and the seasonings. A workable pie for six takes about 1½ lb veal shoulder or leg, ½ lb cooked ham, three or four hard-boiled eggs, and 2 tablespoons flour for the dredging.
- "Casserole" hereThe word is being used for the vessel rather than for the baked dish itself. Use a deep pie dish with a rim the pastry can grip — around 2 quarts.
- Hot oven425–450F. At that heat for a full hour and a quarter the crust will darken well past brown; start at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- Piling the fillingPiling the meat in the centre most likely serves a structural purpose rather than a decorative one: it helps hold the pastry lid clear of the liquid so the underside steams rather than sogs.
- MaceThe ground aril of nutmeg, warmer and lighter than nutmeg itself. It is still sold ground; a scant quarter-teaspoon is enough for this quantity of meat.
- Powdered herbsMost likely shorthand for a dried mixed-herb blend — thyme, marjoram, savory, sometimes sage. Dried thyme and marjoram in equal parts stands in.
- The stock added after bakingThis is what makes the pie sliceable cold. Pour well-seasoned stock through the vent while the pie is still hot; as it cools the gelatin in a good veal stock sets to jelly around the meat. Commercial low-gelatin stock will not do this, so use a homemade veal or chicken stock made with bones.
- DonenessVeal cut in thin slices is cooked long before the crust is; the timing is set by the pastry and by rendering the meat tender rather than merely cooked. An interior reading of 165F is reached early on.
- YieldSix generous portions hot, rather more cold, where it is cut in thin wedges as a cold-table dish.
Veal-and-ham pie belongs to a family of raised and dish pies that were English domestic staples through the nineteenth century and passed into American cookbooks largely unchanged. The hard-boiled eggs laid between the layers are the signature: they slice cleanly and give the cold pie its familiar cross-section of pale meat, pink ham and yellow yolk. The direction to use "trimmings from roast" is the point of the recipe as much as any flourish — pies like this were a means of turning the tail end of a joint into a second meal, and the stock poured in after baking made it a dish that could be carried, sliced and served without reheating. Its ingredient list has plainly been garbled in this printing, with what looks like the following recipe's kidney and carrot running on at the end.