Chicken Pot-pie.
Line the bottom and sides of a pot with a good rich paste, reserving enough for a top crust and for the square bits to be scattered through the pie. Butter the pot very lavishly, or your pastry will stick to it and burn. Cut up a fine large fowl, and half a pound of corned ham or salt pork. Put in a layer of the latter, pepper it, and cover with pieces of the chicken, and this with the paste dumplings or squares. If you use potatoes, parboil them before putting them into the pie, as the first water in which they are boiled is rank and unwholesome. The potatoes should be sliced and laid next the pastry squares; then another layer of pork, and so on until your chicken is used up. Cover with pastry rolled out quite thick, and slit this in the middle. Heat very slowly, and boil two hours. Turn into a large dish, the lower crust on top, and the gravy about it.
This is the old-fashioned pot-pie, dear to the memory of men who were school-boys thirty and forty years ago. If you are not experienced in such manufactures, you had better omit the lower crust; and, having browned the upper, by putting a hot pot-lid or stove-cover on top of the pot for some minutes, remove dexterously without breaking. Pour out the chicken into a dish, and set the crust above it.
Veal, beef-steak, lamb (not mutton), hares, &c., may be substituted for the chicken. The pork will salt it sufficiently.
Baked Chicken Pie ✠
Is made as above, but baked in a buttered pudding-dish, and, in place of the potatoes, three hard-boiled eggs are chopped up and strewed among the pieces of chicken. If the chickens are tough, or even doubtful, parboil them before making the pie, adding the water in which they were boiled, instead of cold water, for gravy. If they are lean, put in a few bits of butter. Ornament with leaves cut out with a cake-cutter, and a star in the centre. Bake an hour—more, if the pie is large.
Chicken Pudding. ✠
Cut up as for fricassee, and parboil, seasoning well with pepper, salt, and a lump of butter the size of an egg, to each chicken. The fowls should be young and tender, and divided at every joint. Stew slowly for half an hour, take them out, and lay on a flat dish to cool. Set aside the water in which they were stewed for your gravy.
Make a batter of one quart of milk, three cups of flour, three tablespoonfuls melted butter, half a teaspoonful soda, and one spoonful of cream tartar, with four eggs well beaten, and a little salt. Put a layer of chicken in the bottom of the dish, and pour about half a cupful of batter over it—enough to conceal the meat; then, another layer of chicken, and more batter, until the dish is full. The batter must form the crust. Bake one hour, in a moderate oven, if the dish is large.
Beat up an egg, and stir into the gravy which was set aside; thicken with two teaspoonfuls of rice or wheat flour, add a little chopped parsley; boil up, and send it to table in a gravy-boat.