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Tongue and Ham Pie
After serving the cold tongue in thin slices cut what remains into neat dice, add an equal amount of finely cut raw ham and diced parboiled potatoes and make a meat pie, using a rich biscuit dough for the crust and moistening with stock the filling.
A leftovers dish with no quantities, no oven temperature and no timing — the original assumes a cook who has just carved a cold boiled tongue and knows what a meat pie looks like. The points below fill in what the text takes for granted.
- What "raw ham" means hereProbably not the cured, ready-to-eat prosciutto sense. The likeliest reading is uncooked ham — fresh or lightly cured pork leg — which is consistent with it going in raw and cooking through in the pie. If you use a modern cooked ham steak instead, the filling only needs heating through, and the bake can be shorter.
- Cook the pork throughDiced raw pork in a covered pie needs the filling to reach 145F/63C at the centre, which a biscuit crust bake will manage if the dice are small (½ inch) and the pie is not overfilled. Check with a thermometer through a vent rather than judging by the crust.
- ProportionsThe text specifies equal parts diced tongue and diced ham; the amount of potato is left open. Taken at roughly the same volume again of potato, the filling comes to about 4 cups, which fills a 9-inch pie plate and serves four to six.
- Parboiled potatoesBoil peeled dice 5–6 minutes, until the edges yield but the centres are firm. Fully cooked potato disintegrates into the stock; raw potato will not soften in the time the crust takes.
- How much stock"Moistening" means about ¾ cup for a 9-inch pie — enough to pool at the bottom, not to swim. A biscuit crust absorbs liquid from below and turns sodden if the filling is soupy. A tablespoon of flour tossed through the meat thickens it as it bakes.
- Rich biscuit doughA short baking-powder dough — roughly 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, 6 tablespoons butter or lard, ¾ cup milk — rolled about ½ inch thick. The recipe does not say whether the crust is top only or top and bottom; a top crust is the safer choice, since biscuit dough under a wet filling tends to go sodden.
- OvenNo heat or timing is given. For a biscuit-topped pie, bake at 425F for 25–30 minutes, until the crust is browned and the filling bubbles at the vents. If the top colours before the meat is done, drop to 375F and cover loosely with foil.
- SaltBoiled tongue and ham are both already salted, sometimes heavily. Salt the dough and the potatoes, but taste the stock before adding any to the filling.
Cold boiled tongue was a fixture of the Anglo-American sideboard well into the twentieth century — bought or cured whole, simmered for hours, pressed in a mould and sliced thin for cold suppers and sandwiches. Recipes like this one are often said to exist because the end of the tongue was awkward to slice neatly, and a household that had paid for a whole tongue was not going to waste the ragged part; the same logic is generally credited with producing potted meats, croquettes and rissoles. The biscuit-dough crust is often taken as an American touch — a chemically leavened top that could be mixed and rolled in minutes, rather than the pastry an English cook might have reached for.