Pigeon Pie
which is best served hot, and is more suited to the dining-room than the race-course.
Line a pie dish with veal force-meat, very highly seasoned, about an inch thick. Place on it some thin slices of fat bacon, three Bordeaux pigeons (trimmed) in halves, a veal sweetbread in slices, an ox palate, boiled and cut up into dice, a dozen asparagus tops, a few button mushrooms (the large ones would give the interior of the pie a bad colour) and the yolks of four eggs. Cover with force-meat, and bake for three hours. Some good veal gravy should be served with this, which I have named
Suffolk Pride.
It is a remarkable fact in natural history that English pigeons are at their best just at the time when the young rooks leave the shelter of their nests. Therefore have I written, in the above recipe, “Bordeaux” pigeons.
Here is a quaint old eighteenth-century recipe, which comes from Northumberland, and is given verbatim, for a
Goose Pie.
Bone a goose, a turkey, a hare, and a brace of grouse; skin it, and cut off all the outside pieces—I mean of the tongue, after boiling it—lay the goose, for the outside a few pieces of hare; then lay in the turkey, the grouse, and the remainder of the tongue and hare. Season highly between each layer with pepper and salt, mace and cayenne, and put it together, and draw it close with a needle and thread. Take 20 lbs. of flour, put 5 lbs. of butter into a pan with some water, let it boil, pour it among the flour, stir it with a knife, then work it with your hands till quite stiff. Let it stand before the fire for half an hour, then raise your pie and set it to cool; then finish it, put in the meat, close the pie, and set it in a cold place. Ornament according to your taste, bandage it with calico dipped in fat. Let it stand all night before baking. It will take a long time to bake. The oven must be pretty hot for the first four hours, and then allowed to slacken. To know when it is enough, raise one of the ornaments, and with a fork try if the meat is tender. If it is hard the pie must be put in again for two hours more. After it comes out of the oven fill up with strong stock, well seasoned, or with clarified butter. All standing pies made in this way.
Verily, in the eighteenth century they must have had considerably more surplus cash and time, and rather more angelic cooks than their descendants!
During cold weather the interior of the coach should be well filled with earthenware vessels containing such provender as hot-pot, hare soup, mullagatawny, lobster à l’Américaine, curried rabbit, devilled larks—with the matériel for heating these. Such cold viands as game pie, pressed beef, boar’s head, foie gras (truffled), plain truffles (to be steamed and served with buttered toast) anchovies, etc. The larks should be smothered with a paste made from a mixture of mustard, Chili vinegar, and a little anchovy paste, and kept closely covered up. After heating, add cayenne to taste.