Home › Meats and Entrees › Burgundy Pie
Burgundy Pie
Chop fine the breasts and wings of two chickens, add 1 cup of bread-crumbs, or full half a pint, 1/2 cup of melted butter, salt, pepper, and the beaten yolks of 3 eggs. Add 2 chicken livers and 2 gizzards and the hearts, boiled 1 hour in 1 cup of stock and cut up, also the stock. Then add 2 tablespoonfuls of chopped ham and as much chopped mushrooms. Stir all, and cook together for 10 minutes. Line a mould with puff paste, fill with this, and cover with paste. Bake 1 1/2 hours, pour 1 cup of stock in hole, serve hot or cold.
This is a raised chicken pie of the pâté en croûte type: a forcemeat of chopped breast meat and giblets baked in pastry, then finished with stock poured through the vent so it sets to jelly as the pie cools. The original gives no oven temperature and no yield.
- The hinge: stock through the holeThe cup of stock goes in after baking, through the steam vent, while the pie is still hot. Use stock made from the chicken carcasses so it has enough gelatine to set; a thin unset stock will simply soak the pastry and leak.
- Oven temperatureBake at 400F for the first 20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then reduce to 350F for the remainder. A full hour and a half at high heat will scorch the crust long before the centre is done.
- Half a pint of crumbsThe recipe offers "1 cup of bread-crumbs, or full half a pint" as equivalents, which they are: a US half-pint is one cup. The recipe does not say whether the crumbs are fresh or dried; soft fresh crumbs suit this filling, and should be measured loosely.
- Gizzards need longerGizzards are dense muscle and an hour in a cup of stock rarely renders them tender enough to chop pleasantly. Give them 90 minutes to 2 hours, adding the livers and hearts only for the last 15 minutes so they do not turn to grit.
- Doneness, not clock timeThe filling is bound with egg yolk and should be taken to 165F at the centre. Check with a probe through the vent rather than relying on the stated hour and a half.
- The mouldA hinged raised-pie mould or a springform tin of about 7 inches serves. Line it with the paste, leaving an overhang to seal the lid, and cut a vent in the centre before baking. Bought puff pastry works, though a hot-water crust holds its shape better under this much wet filling.
- Two chickens, breasts and wings onlyThat is roughly 1.5 to 2 lb of trimmed meat, depending on the size of the birds. The legs and carcasses can go elsewhere in the household menu, or into the stock the recipe keeps calling for.
- Yield and servingServes 6 to 8. If serving cold, chill overnight in the mould so the jellied stock sets firm and the pie cuts cleanly.
Burgundy has a long tradition of pâtés and terrines baked in pastry, and this is a domesticated English-language version of that idea: forcemeat of white chicken meat and giblets, enriched with ham and mushroom, sealed in a crust and set with jellied stock. The technique of pouring stock in through the vent after baking is standard raised-pie practice, filling the gap left as the meat shrinks and giving the cold pie its sliceable jelly. Regional names of this kind are often better read as an indication of style and pedigree than as a claim of literal origin, and it is worth noting that the recipe contains no wine at all. The frank use of livers, hearts and gizzards is worth noting: these were assumed to arrive with any bird bought whole.