MEAT AND POULTRY PIES
Chicken pie
Cut at every joint a pair of young chickens. Lay on ice while you make a gravy of the pinions, necks and feet—scalding and skinning the feet before putting with the rest over the fire, covering deep with cold water and bringing slowly to the boil. Cook until the flesh is in rags, and the liquor reduced by one-half. Strain, season highly with onion juice, salt and paprika, thicken with browned flour and let the gravy get cold.
Meanwhile, arrange your chicken in a bake-dish; lay among the pieces either well-seasoned forcemeat balls no larger than marbles, made of bread-crumbs and hard-boiled yolks, bound with a raw egg, or canned mushrooms. Of course, fresh mushrooms are better if you can afford them. Put in a cupful of cold water, cover with a good crust, half an inch thick, and bake for an hour and a half. Lay a piece of stout paper over the pie to keep it from browning too fast. When you remove this at the end of an hour draw the pie to the door of the oven, fit a funnel into a slit left in the center of the crust and pour in all the gravy it will hold. Do this very quickly, shut up the oven and leave the pie in until done. Remove the paper ten minutes before the time is up and brown lightly.
GAME PIE IN NAPKINED DISH
SMALL CHICKEN PIE
CHICKEN PIE IN SILVER STAND
Cold chicken pie
Make precisely as in last recipe, but add to the gravy while hot a tablespoonful of gelatine soaked for two hours in cold water enough to cover it. Pour into the pie as already directed. Let the pie get cold before eating it. The gravy will be jellied.
This is a nice dish for Sunday dinners in hot weather.
Fowl pie
Cut an old fowl into joints, splitting the back and dividing the breast into quarters. Put over the fire in plenty of cold water, season with onion juice and the juice of half a lemon. No salt and no pepper. Cover closely and simmer very gently for several hours until you find it tender. Strain off the gravy and season with onion juice, celery salt, a bay-leaf, minced parsley, paprika and salt. Return the gravy to the fire, stir in a lump of butter rolled in browned flour and cook one minute. Arrange the chicken in a deep bake-dish, pour in the gravy, lay over the top two hard-boiled eggs cut into thin slices, cover with a good crust, and bake.
Chicken pot pies
For these have several stoneware or other fire-proof deep dishes, about the size of a bird bath. Cut up a young fowl into joints, cover with cold water and cook tender, but not until the meat leaves the bones. Lay a piece of dark meat and one of light in each dish; sprinkle with minced salt pork, and drop in each dish potato marbles which have been parboiled for ten minutes. Add small cubes of pastry, three to each dish, and two small young onions, no bigger than the end of your thumb. Unless they are mere infants, parboil them five minutes before they go in. Have ready two cupfuls of the liquor in which the chicken was cooked. Thicken with a lump of butter rolled in browned flour; season with paprika and minced parsley. The pork should salt it sufficiently. Fill the dishes, cover each with a good crust, make a slit in the middle and bake, covered with paper, half an hour. Then brown.
You may, if you like, make one dish of this, but many prefer the individual “portions.”
Chicken and ham pie
Cut up and stew the chickens, as in last recipe. Have ready four good-sized slices of corned ham (not smoked), boiled and cold, and cut into strips. Put a layer of ham in the bottom of a buttered bake-dish, season with chopped mushrooms and parsley, salt and pepper, and add a layer of white sauce, the base of which is the liquor in which the chickens were cooked. Next, place in the dish the pieces of chicken in regular order, and upon these the yolks of hard-boiled eggs. Repeat the seasoning and the sauce, lay a few strips of ham over the top, cover with a good paste, wash the pie with beaten egg, and bake for an hour and a half. If you have no mushrooms you may substitute a little mushroom catsup.
Veal pie (No. 1)
Cut three pounds of lean veal into inch-square cubes; put into a saucepan with a cupful of cold water, and heat slowly. Remove the scum as it begins to boil; add two small onions, sliced, two tablespoonfuls of carrot cubes, and one teaspoonful of salt. Let it simmer until very tender. Put the meat then into a deep baking-dish.
Let the liquor boil down to one cupful and a half, strain it and remove most of the fat. Add one-half cupful of cream or of rich milk, and pepper to taste. Thicken it with a tablespoonful of flour rubbed in one of butter; cook it five minutes, and strain it over the meat. If you have any cold boiled ham you may add a little of it to the veal, cutting it into tiny pieces.
Cover with a rich biscuit dough, half an inch thick, and bake one hour, covered with thick paper. Uncover and brown.
Veal pie (No. 2)
Cut two pounds of coarse lean veal into cubes and cook tender in enough cold water to cover it. Have ready half a pound of finely-minced pork, an onion, chopped fine, two tablespoonfuls of finely-minced olives, a stalk of celery cut fine, and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Put a stratum of veal in the bottom of a buttered bake-dish; cover with this mixture and sprinkle with paprika and with butter. When all the materials are used up in this order fill the dish with gravy made by thickening the liquor in which the veal was stewed with browned flour, adding a tablespoonful of tomato catsup, and boiling one minute. Cover with a good crust; make a slit in the top and bake, covered, one hour; then brown.
Beef and tomato pie
Cut a pint of cold roast beef into small dice of uniform size, and mix with it two or three slices of bacon, also cut small. Line a deep dish with good puff paste, put a layer of the beef and bacon in the bottom of the dish, season with pepper and salt, cover with a layer of peeled and sliced tomatoes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and dots of butter rolled in flour; add more meat and more tomatoes, until the dish is full. Cover the top layer with bits of butter, then with a crust of puff paste, making holes in this for the escape of steam. Bake until brown.
Beef and potato pie
Moisten three cupfuls of minced roast beef with a little stock, season to taste, and put it into a greased pudding-dish. Into a large cupful of mashed potatoes beat a little milk and a tablespoonful of melted butter. Season this potato and spread it over the top of the minced beef. Set it in the oven and bake, covered, for twenty minutes; uncover, wash over with beaten white of eggs and cook for fifteen minutes longer, or until it is lightly browned.
Beefsteak pie
Cut two pounds of round steak into small squares. Cover (barely) with cold water and cook tender, very slowly. Cut two veal kidneys into cubes and (if you can get it) a sweetbread, blanched by throwing it into cold water, after parboiling it. Drain the liquor from the beef, and let both get almost cold. Make a good gravy by thickening this liquor with a tablespoonful of butter rolled in browned flour, seasoning well with kitchen bouquet, onion juice, salt and pepper. Let it simmer two minutes. Arrange the beef, kidneys and sweetbread in neat layers in the dish, interspersing these with a dozen small oysters. Pour in the gravy, cover with a good crust, half an inch thick, and cook, covered, one hour; then brown.
Kidney pie
Cut four kidneys into neat squares and stew gently in weak stock for half an hour. Cook a quarter-pound of macaroni till tender, and cut it into inch lengths. Butter a baking-dish and put in a layer of macaroni; over that spread a layer of sliced kidneys, seasoned with pepper, salt and made mustard. Sprinkle over a little flour, and add a layer of tomatoes. Repeat these layers and cover with fine bread-crumbs when the dish is filled. Pour in a rich gravy made from the stock in which the kidneys were stewed; put small bits of butter over the crumbs on top, and bake steadily for one hour.
Sweetbread pie
Blanch two sweetbreads by parboiling for ten minutes, then leaving in ice-cold water for the same length of time. When firm cut into half-inch squares. Make a white roux by cooking in a saucepan two tablespoonfuls of flour in two of butter, add gradually a cupful of cream heated with a pinch of soda, season with half a teaspoonful of salt and half a saltspoonful of white pepper, a few grains of cayenne, and two tablespoonfuls of stewed and strained tomato. Put the sweetbreads and sauce into a deep dish, cover with a rich crust, make a slit in the center; bake, covered, half an hour, then brown. Beat one egg, add half a cupful of hot cream, and pour into the opening in the crust just before serving.
Mutton chop pie
Trim two pounds of tender chops by cutting away skin, fat, and two inches of the rib bone. With the refuse trimmings make a gravy by cooking slowly three hours in just enough water to cover them. Let it cool, skim off all the fat, season highly, thicken well with browned flour, boil up once and again let it cool.
Arrange the chops on the inside of a bake-dish, overlapping one another; fill the central space with chopped mushrooms, a chopped tomato, six small button onions and a pint of green peas. Pour in the gravy; cover with a good crust, make a slit in the middle and bake, covered, half an hour; then brown.
Veal chop pie
May be made as above, substituting chopped tomatoes for the green peas. In this case have the gravy very thick, as the tomato juice will thin it.
Small pork pies
(A Devonshire recipe.)
Chop fine a quarter of a pound of beef kidney suet and mix with it an equal quantity of butter. Rub both into a pound of flour and set all over the fire in a saucepan until the butter and suet are melted and the flour very hot. Knead together then into a stiff paste, cover with the cloth and put it near the fire while you make ready the meat. There should be about two pounds of the neck of pork, and this should be cut into very small pieces, seasoned liberally with salt, pepper and a teaspoonful of powdered sage, and cooked gently for twenty-five minutes before it goes into the pie. The paste must then be divided into as many pieces as you wish to have pies, and these must be made into round shapes—“built up” into the shape of round pies. The way to do this must be studied carefully, for it is a knack in itself. The fist is put into the middle of the piece of dough from which the pie is to be raised, and by working it in a circular fashion the hollow is formed which is to receive the meat. The process should really be seen to be adequately understood. When the pie is “raised” the meat is put into it, a round of paste laid on the top and its edge pinched to that of the lower crust. It is then baked in a steady, rather slow, oven.
An English pork pie
Cook two pounds of lean pork for half an hour in enough weak stock to cover it. Let it get cold in the liquor (which reserve for the gravy). Take out the cold meat and cut into neat dice. Butter a deep dish and lay in some of the meat. Cover with a layer of hard-boiled eggs, chopped coarsely; season with onion juice, pepper, salt and a pinch of nutmeg. Stick bits of butter here and there. Dust with browned flour.
Strain and reheat the liquor in which the meat was cooked; stir in a lump of butter rolled in browned flour, cook one minute, add a teaspoonful of Worcestershire sauce; pour into the pie, and let it cool before covering with a good paste. Cut a slit in the middle of the crust; bake, covered, three-quarters of an hour. Uncover, wash with white of egg and brown.
Send around apple sauce with it.
A New England pork pie
Boil half a pound of “streaked” salt pork with a sliced onion and four parsnips of moderate size. Put them on in enough cold water to cover them, and boil until the parsnips are tender, the onion cooked to rags. Have ready three fair-sized potatoes, sliced and parboiled. Slice the parsnips. Cut the pork into very small, thin slices, and line a deep dish with it. Put in a layer of sliced potatoes, sprinkle with flour, salt and pepper, a layer of sliced parsnips, then another layer of each. Add enough of the water in which the pork and parsnips were boiled to fill the dish. Cover with a good crust, and bake in a good oven one hour.
It is said by those who like parsnips to be very good—considering!