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March 30
Menu: Cream of Barley Soup; English Chicken Pie; Broiled Tomatoes; Cucumber Salad with Red Peppers; Biscuits; Cheese; Coffee English Chicken Pie-1 chicken, 1/2 pound veal fillet, 4 ounces bacon, 3 hard-cooked eggs, 14 pound mushrooms, 2 tablespoons Crisco, pepper and salt to taste, chopped parsley, puff-pastry, stock, and 1 egg. Slice Cut fowl into small joints, season these with salt and pepper. veal thinly, line bottom of fireproof dish with this, place on top a layer of chicken. Chop mushrooms finely, saute them in Crisco in small stewpan; sprinkle half of this over pieces of chicken, then layer of hard-cooked eggs, over that thin slices bacon and chopped parsley. Continue in this way until all ingredients are used up and the fireproof dish is full; fill dish three parts full with stock. Put a strip of pastry round the edge of dish, wet this lightly with water, cover the pie with puff-pastry rolled out to the proper size and thickness; press down the paste on to the wet edge of paste, trim round. Decorate the paste at the edge according to taste; brush over pie with beaten egg, make a slit in the center of the lid, and place a circle of pastry leaves round it. Put pie in moderate oven, and bake about 1½ hours. Pour in a little stock before serving.
A layered chicken-and-veal pie of the English raised-pie tradition, set out here as one day in a year-long calendar of dinners. The text has been mangled slightly in printing — the section heading "Slice" is the opening word of the second sentence, which should read "Slice veal thinly."
- The hinge: pastry versus fillingA puff-pastry lid will be fully coloured long before 1½ hours are up. Once it is deep gold, lay foil loosely over the top for the rest of the bake so the meat beneath comes up to temperature without the crust burning.
- Moderate ovenUsually read as somewhere around 350-375F. At that heat a full deep dish of raw chicken and veal in stock will want most of the 1½ hours; check that the thickest chicken joint reads 165F through the steam slit.
- Fireproof dishA deep oven-proof pie dish or a 2- to 3-quart casserole with a rim wide enough to take the pastry collar. Straight sides matter more than depth; the lid must span without sagging into the filling.
- Fowl'Fowl' in books of this period generally meant a mature bird, often an older laying hen, tougher and more strongly flavoured than a modern roasting chicken. A 4-5 lb chicken jointed small works; thighs and drumsticks hold up better over a long bake than breast, which will dry.
- The pastry collarThe strip of pastry pressed round the wet rim before the lid goes on is structural, not decorative — it gives the lid something to grip so it does not slide off as the filling shrinks. Egg wash goes on last, after trimming, or it glues the layers shut at the edge.
- CriscoThe mushrooms are sautéed in shortening because this book exists to sell it. Butter or oil does the job and tastes better; the quantity is small either way.
- SaltBacon, stock and the seasoned fowl all contribute. Season the chicken lightly and taste the stock before it goes in, or the finished pie will be sharp.
- Stock, before and afterThree parts full means the liquid should sit below the top layer, not cover it — a flooded pie steams the pastry from underneath. The extra stock poured through the steam slit at the end should be hot, and the pie wants ten minutes' rest before cutting.
- YieldA pie of this size feeds six to eight. It is at least as good cold the next day, when the stock has set to jelly around the eggs and bacon.
Layered pies of poultry, veal, bacon and hard-cooked egg bound with jellied stock are a fixture of English cookery from the eighteenth century onward, and were carried into American household books largely unchanged. The layers are what distinguish this family of pies from a plain chicken pie in gravy. Its appearance here is a commercial one: The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to introduce hydrogenated vegetable shortening to cooks who had always used lard and butter, and a related Procter & Gamble "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a menu to every day of the year so that the new fat would turn up in a household's cooking as routine rather than novelty. Note how little Crisco the recipe actually calls for: a spoonful to sauté the mushrooms. The pastry, the one place shortening would have mattered most, is left entirely to the cook.
A layered chicken-and-veal pie of the English raised-pie tradition, set out here as one day in a year-long calendar of dinners. The text has been mangled slightly in printing — the section heading "Slice" is the opening word of the second sentence, which should read "Slice veal thinly."
- The hinge: pastry versus fillingA puff-pastry lid will be fully coloured long before 1½ hours are up. Once it is deep gold, lay foil loosely over the top for the rest of the bake so the meat beneath comes up to temperature without the crust burning.
- Moderate ovenUsually read as somewhere around 350-375F. At that heat a full deep dish of raw chicken and veal in stock will want most of the 1½ hours; check that the thickest chicken joint reads 165F through the steam slit.
- Fireproof dishA deep oven-proof pie dish or a 2- to 3-quart casserole with a rim wide enough to take the pastry collar. Straight sides matter more than depth; the lid must span without sagging into the filling.
- Fowl'Fowl' in books of this period generally meant a mature bird, often an older laying hen, tougher and more strongly flavoured than a modern roasting chicken. A 4-5 lb chicken jointed small works; thighs and drumsticks hold up better over a long bake than breast, which will dry.
- The pastry collarThe strip of pastry pressed round the wet rim before the lid goes on is structural, not decorative — it gives the lid something to grip so it does not slide off as the filling shrinks. Egg wash goes on last, after trimming, or it glues the layers shut at the edge.
- CriscoThe mushrooms are sautéed in shortening because this book exists to sell it. Butter or oil does the job and tastes better; the quantity is small either way.
- SaltBacon, stock and the seasoned fowl all contribute. Season the chicken lightly and taste the stock before it goes in, or the finished pie will be sharp.
- Stock, before and afterThree parts full means the liquid should sit below the top layer, not cover it — a flooded pie steams the pastry from underneath. The extra stock poured through the steam slit at the end should be hot, and the pie wants ten minutes' rest before cutting.
- YieldA pie of this size feeds six to eight. It is at least as good cold the next day, when the stock has set to jelly around the eggs and bacon.
Layered pies of poultry, veal, bacon and hard-cooked egg bound with jellied stock are a fixture of English cookery from the eighteenth century onward, and were carried into American household books largely unchanged. The layers are what distinguish this family of pies from a plain chicken pie in gravy. Its appearance here is a commercial one: The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble to introduce hydrogenated vegetable shortening to cooks who had always used lard and butter, and a related Procter & Gamble "Calendar of Dinners" assigned a menu to every day of the year so that the new fat would turn up in a household's cooking as routine rather than novelty. Note how little Crisco the recipe actually calls for: a spoonful to sauté the mushrooms. The pastry, the one place shortening would have mattered most, is left entirely to the cook.