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Star-Gazy Pie
(Cornwall.) Clean and scale some fresh mackerel, season it with parsley, thyme, sweet marjoram, and bayleaves. Butter a dish and line it with bread-crumbs, put in the fish, in layers, with herbs and crumbs between. Add the yolks of 4 eggs beaten with 2 tablespoonfuls of tarragon vinegar, cover with a layer of thinly cut bacon and a very light pie-crust. Bake 2 hours and serve, hot or cold.
The recipe gives no oven temperature, no quantity of fish and no dish size, which is normal for 1902 but leaves some decisions to you. The two crucial adjustments are the baking time and the boning of the fish.
- Quantities"Some fresh mackerel" is genuinely open. Four whole mackerel, filleted, fills a 9-inch pie dish and serves four to six; the four egg yolks and two tablespoons of vinegar suit roughly that amount.
- OvenNo heat is given. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for a pie of this construction with a light crust; if the crust colours before the fish is set, cover it loosely with foil.
- The two hoursThis is the instruction to overturn. Two hours will reduce mackerel to dry threads. Filleted mackerel layered in a dish needs 40 to 50 minutes at 350F, by which point the crust is baked through and the yolk mixture has set.
- Bone the fishThe original cleans and scales but does not fillet, and mackerel bones are fine and numerous. Fillet the fish and run a finger along the centre line for pin bones before layering, unless you want to pick bones out of a set custard.
- Tarragon vinegarStill sold, and worth using rather than substituting: it carries the herb flavour into the yolks in a way plain wine vinegar does not. If you have none, steep a sprig of tarragon in white wine vinegar for a few days, or use white wine vinegar with extra fresh tarragon in the herb layers.
- HerbsSweet marjoram is ordinary marjoram; oregano is a coarser relative and will dominate. Use the bay leaves whole between layers and lift them out before serving rather than chopping them in.
- Bacon"Thinly cut bacon" is unspecified; plain (green, unsmoked) streaky is the likelier reading for a Cornish kitchen of the period, though smoked bacon was also cured there. Heavily smoked supermarket bacon will overwhelm the mackerel; pancetta or unsmoked streaky is closer.
- Crust and crumbsThe breadcrumb lining absorbs the oil that renders out of the mackerel, so use dry crumbs rather than fresh soft ones. Vent the pastry lid, or the steam from the fish will lift it off the filling.
- ServingServed cold it slices cleanly, the yolks having set into a firm layer, and this is arguably the better way to eat it; a sharp salad or pickled cucumber cuts the richness.
Star-gazy pie belongs to the pilchard ports of west Cornwall, and its name comes from the fish heads left protruding through the crust, apparently gazing upward — the practical justification usually offered is that the heads sit outside the pastry so that the oils released in cooking run back down into the body of the pie. It is most often associated with Mousehole and with Tom Bawcock's Eve on 23 December, a celebration traditionally said to commemorate a fisherman who put to sea in bad weather and brought back enough fish to save the village from a hungry winter, though the story is folklore rather than documented history. The version here has quietly lost the whole point of the name: the fish are filleted into layers, the crust is unbroken, and nothing gazes at anything. It also uses mackerel rather than pilchards; the Cornish pilchard fishery was in decline by 1900, though whether that decline explains this particular substitution is guesswork.