5.7 Meat Pies & Puddings – Completed!

With finally cooking recipe #445 To Make a Yorkshire Christmas Pye, I have completed the Meat Pies & Puddings section of the Meat, Poultry & Game chapter of English Food by Jane Grigson.

It was quite a big section – 21 recipes in all – and because the English have a rich history regarding pies and puddings, it covers quite a lot of ground. I found Jane’s choices really evocative of both history and regionality, both of which have declined over this – and the last – century.

Of course meat pies have a chequered past, and factory-made ones with their homogenous pink insides, or their non-specific minced meats, have sadly become the norm for us Brits; but once every home had their own repertoire of meat pies and puddings, and perhaps popped into their butcher or grocer for special pies for special occasions. Jane pines for times past: ‘We were once known for our pork pies’, she says, ‘and other pies as well. Pies, like puddings, were a great English speciality. I suppose that the reason for our modern failure is that our butchery trade was not stiffened by the same legal props and alliances: with the increasing demand for cheap food, cheapness rather than quality, all professional skill has gone.’ They were so prized that folk owned special leather pie cases used for storing and protecting pies over long journeys. Jane also blames modern farming methods that have left us with pork that’s ‘had the succulence bred out of it.’

The historical ground she covers is amazing: and the English medieval raised pie receives plenty of deserved attention. There are the celebration pies of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and includes Hannah Glasse’s #322 To Make a Goose Pye and #445 To Make a Yorkshire Christmas Pye. From medieval to Tudor times when pastry is a more delicate and pies are made from shortcrust pastry we have the classic #70 Cornish Pasty, designed to be held and tough enough to slip into a worker’s pocket to survive a morning’s work. Then, as we move into the Stuart era, pastry get even more rich and ‘puff pastes’ begin to appear, perhaps to top your #43 English Game Pie. All types are in there, and I have to say I have come quite adept at almost every aspect of pie and pastry-making, right down to the #283 Jellied Stock.

Jane had her own thoughts on pastry, bringing up ‘the question of taste and discretion. If you make a Cornish pasty for a miner…the pastry has to be very thick, or the whole thing will spoil. If you are making mince pes for the end of as large meal, you will need to roll the pastry thinner than if they are destined to fill up hungry young carol singers.’ Therefore she gives little information on how much pastry required, or indeed how to make it – something one would not get away with today. She says: ‘This is the kind of cooking accommodation we rapidly become used to. Therefore…only the type of pastry will be indicated, not its weight.’ I must admit I agree; after you’ve made a couple using your own dishes, you do get an instinct for how much you may need.

I have to say I got so much pleasure from cooking these recipes, especially the raised pies. Indeed it was making these pies in the US in my science days, and seeing how well they went down with folk who do not have them as part of their food culture, stirred up thoughts of starting my own food business. Years later I would become known for my pies making them in their hundreds for the restaurant. I have much to thank Jane for.

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There are many recipes that are not included in the chapter, but I suppose Jane had to stop somewhere, there being thousands of pie and pudding recipes. But some omissions are glaring: my main issue being the lack of puddings – one recipe in the whole section! If there is anything more English than a meat pie, then it is meat pudding. To be fair the one she does include – #200 Steak, Kidney & Oyster Pudding – is the classic, but I would have added maybe minted lamb, oxtail and plough pudding at the very least. Her niche, regional pies were interesting, but not always a success. If I were to write a pie chapter I would certainly add beef & potato, minced beef & onion and a proper pigeon pie of old: pigeon, beefsteak and bacon baked in a double layer of suet and shortcrust pastry.

There were some very, very good recipes: #43 English Game Pie (hot, with puff pastry) and #369 Game, Chicken or Rabbit Pie (cold, with hot water pastry)both scored full marks, and the excellent potato-topped #416 Cumbrian Tatie Pot narrowly missed out with a score of 9.5/10. Then, #320 Steak, Kidney and Oyster Pie and its pudding equivalent (#200) both scored 9/10.

I have to give a special mention to the showstopping pyes from Hannah Glasse: #445 To Make a Yorkshire Christmas Pye being possibly the craziest thing I’ve ever made in my life.

#156 Cheshire Pork and Apple Pie was the only disappointing one really.

Time for the stats: there were 21 recipes, but I only counted 18: #282 Raised Pies and #283 Jellied Stock being constituents of other recipes, and the Christmas pye which I never got to eat.

The section scored a mean of 8.11/10, the second-highest score so far (9.1 Stuffings being the highest). It has a median and mode of 8 – high, but others have been higher measured this way.

As usual, I have listed the recipes below in the order they appear in the book with links to my posts and their individual scores, so have a gander. It is worth pointing out, that my posts are no substitute for Jane’s wonderful writing, so if you don’t own a copy of English Food, I suggest you get yourself one.

#70 Cornish Pasty 8/10

#320 Steak, Kidney and Oyster Pie 9/10

#129 Dartmouth Pie 7.5/10

#233 Devonshire Squab Pie 6/10

#416 Cumbrian Tatie Pot 9.5/10

#388 Sweet Lamb Pie from Westmorland 8/10

#156 Cheshire Pork and Apple Pie 5/10

#303 Cornish Charter Pie 8.5/10

#209 Chicken and Leek Pie from Wales 7/10

#324 Rabbit Pie 8/10

#43 English Game Pie 10/10

#214 Venison (or Game) Pie or Pasty 7.5/10

#282 Raised Pies n/a

#283 Jellied Stock n/a

#312 Pork Pie Filling 8/10

#284 Veal, Ham and Egg Pie 8.5/10

#403 Raised Mutton Pies 8/10

#369 Game, Chicken or Rabbit Pie 10/10

#445 To Make a Yorkshire Christmas Pye (Part 1 & Part 2) ?/10

#322 To Make a Goose Pye 8.5/10

#200 Steak, Kidney and Oyster Pudding 9/10

#445 To Make a Yorkshire Christmas Pye: Part 2

And so here we have my interpretation of Hannah Glasse’s Yorkshire Christmas Pye I made for the Channel 5 show Our Victorian Christmas (click here for part 1: history) Before I go on though, I found that the Christmas pye sequence had to be cut out for time – the show having to be cut down last minute to just one episode of an hour’s length. Boo!

I am still in the episode though: I also made Wassail and did a few to-camera bits about Victorian Christmas food. It’s on Channel 5, 9pm, 22 December (I’ll post a link when one becomes available).

Ingredients:

1 turkey

1 goose

1 chicken

1 partridge

1 woodpigeon

2.5 kg salted butter

1 hare

A selection of oven-ready small game e.g. woodcock, grouse, teal, snipe

2 eggs

Spice mix:

15 g each ground mace, nutmeg and black pepper

8 g ground cloves

50 g salt

Hot water pastry. Approximately 15 batches of the following:

500 g plain flour

500 g strong white bread flour

1 tsp salt

350 g lard

350 ml boiling water

First make the hot water pastry: mix the flours and salt in a bowl, then place lard and boiling water in a saucepan, put on a low heat and let the lard melt – don’t let it boil as it might erupt, so be careful. As soon as the lard has melted, make a well in the centre and pour in the water and fat. Mix with a wooden spoon to make a dough. As soon as it is cool enough to handle, knead slightly. Cover and cool. This can be done a couple of days in advance – simply store in the fridge.

Using a very sharp knife and poultry shears bone the turkey, goose, chicken, partridge and woodpigeon. Begin by cutting out the birds’ spines with the shears, then cut away from the carcass. Don’t worry about keeping the drumstick or even thigh meat of the partridge or wood pigeon.

Lay out the birds cut side up, then make the spice mix by mixing together the ingredients and scatter it over the birds. Now wrap the partridge around the woodpigeon, so that the pigeon fills the cavity inside the partridge, making the partridge look whole. Wrap the chicken around the two birds and so on until you have what looks like a whole goose, albeit a somewhat gory one. Refrigerate.

Now make the base of the pie. Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper. Knead together two or three batches of pastry and roll out, making sure you flour your worktop. The pastry needs to be 5 or 6 cm thick. To get dimensions, use the whole goose as a template: it needs to fit inside snugly and there needs to be a border wide enough to build up a 5 to 6 cm thick wall. I built up the sides by rolling thick bricks of pastry and glued them on by cross-hatching the pastry and brushing with water. Then I smoothed the pastry. I needed a final height of around 30 cm. If possible, refrigerate to firm up the pastry.

Sir the 5 birds in the pie, then joint the hare (ask your butcher to do this) and tuck in pieces, along with your small game: I used 2 grouse and 2 teal, but snipe and woodcock would also work. Scatter over any remaining spice mix and then pile on large cubes of salted butter, tucking it inside and between the game.

Roll a lid with more pastry, cut a large steam hole and place on top of the pie. Decorate with a pastry rose and leaves. Glaze with egg wash.

If you can allow the pastry to firm up in the fridge or somewhere cool. Preheat the oven to 230°C.

It needed two people to get the pie safely in the oven. It’s important to have a high heat at first, so the pastry can seal up. My pie started to collapse as the front and leak butter because the heat couldn’t get round. (I found out later that that was prevented by tying card or metal around the pie, rather like a corset, keeping things from oozing out.)

It took 8 hours to cook the meat inside to a safe temperature – a meat thermometer should read 74°C. The pastry will be very black by this point – remember it isn’t for eating, it is for protection.

We let it cool for a little while, packed it up and drove to a local restaurant so we could place it their walk-in fridge. The next morning it was whisked away – not by coach or train, but by car.

#445 To Make a Yorkshire Christmas Pye. A recipe I really thought I would ever cook, and what an experience! In all it took me 5 days (on and off) to make the pie. When it started to collapse in the oven I thought all was lost, but when we took it out of the oven, I saw the side closest to the back of the oven was absolutely fine. I just wish I could have tried some of the contents: the poor old bits of game on the top got a bit blackened, but the 5 birds together looked well protected. I don’t know how it turned out, and I can’t seem to get a photo of the contents. I am going to attempt this again one day, but I shall use a different recipe. My score? It’ll have to be a ?/10!

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#414 Oldbury Gooseberry Tarts

The summer fruit season is pretty much done and dusted now, with just autumn raspberries and wild blackberries hanging around, but back in June at the very beginning of the season, I made these little gooseberry ‘tarts’. I’m using ‘inverted commas’ there because they are not tarts, they are pies.

In their simplest form, Oldbury fruit tarts are hand-raised pies made from a hot-water pastry, filled with fruit and sugar and then baked. The pies, according to two of Jane’s correspondents, had links with Oldbury in Gloucestershire, and would be made by families as soon as soft fruits began to appear. In the latter half of the 19^th century (and I’m sure much earlier than that too) the pies were ‘sold at fairs at a penny each’.

Below is the recipe and my review of the tarts, but it’s worth pointing out that sometimes these Oldbury pies would be made just like normal raised pies, but instead for being filled with jellied stock as you would a pork pie, it is filled with fruit jelly preserve instead. This sounds so delicious and I may have a go at these more complex ones. I like the idea of a slice of fruit pie with jelly and some good cheese (Gloucester, of course) to round off a meal.

The hot water pastry for these pies is different to Jane’s recipe for her savoury (#282) Raised Pies in that there is both lard and butter here but no egg or icing sugar (which give crispness and an appetising brown colour to the cooked pastry). However, the method is essentially the same:

First cube 4 ounces each of butter and lard and pour over them 5 tablespoons of boiling water. Stir around until the fats have melted. Put a pound of plain flour in a bowl, make a well in the centre and tip in the warm liquid mixture. Using a wooden spoon, and then your hands, form a dough.

At this point, I kneaded the dough until smooth – Jane says it should have ‘a waxy look’ – then popped it back in the bowl, covered it with cling film and left it to rest for a bit until it felt like it could be rolled and moulded successfully.

I found that the dough made six tarts using Jane’s method of thinly rolling out batches into circles and, then using a saucer as a template to cut out perfect shapes. I kept the trimmings for the lids.

Here’s the tricky bit: now mould the edges of each pastry circle to a height of about an inch so that they form cases – or in old English coffyns. This was a bit of a nightmare; you need a good cool stiff dough to do this, and if possible, three hands.

Now you can tumble in your topped and tailed gooseberries (about 8 ounces altogether) and a good amount of Demerara sugar (at least an ounce per tart, I’d say, but use your discretion). Roll out the lids, make a hole in the centre, and glue them in place with a brush and water, making sure you crimp the edges. Now leave the pastry to harden, this is a matter of a couple of hours in the fridge, but if leaving them in a cool larder, it’ll require an overnight wait.

Bake the ‘tarts’ for around 25-30 minutes at 200⁰C. Because of a lack of either egg , icing sugar or glaze, the pastry doesn’t turn a nice golden brown, but if the filling is happily bubbling away within, you can be pretty sure they are ready.

I served them warm with some pouring cream.

#414 Oldbury Gooseberry Tarts. Well these were not really worth the effort as the pastry was pretty disappointing in both taste and texture. Gooseberries in any form are good of course, so I did eat them. I’m looking forward to trying to make a larger pie filled with fruit jelly – that hasto be delicious. 4/10.

#403 Raised Mutton Pies

Just a quickie from theMeat Pies &Puddings part of the Meat, Poultry & Game Chapter:

This is the last of the raised pie recipes in English Food. It’s a little different in that you don’t need to make a jellied stock like the others, but a gravy made from mutton bones.

If you can’t get hold of mutton, then lamb will do just as well.

To make the pie, you will need to make a batch of hot water pastry – have a look at the post #282 Raised Pies. It also goes through the process of making the pies themselves. In this case, the pies are to be made small. To do this you can use wooden pie dollies or jam jars and raise the pastry around them. Alternatively, and much easier, is to use muffin tins and roll pastry to fit.

For the filling, you need a whole best end of neck of mutton, or a pound of fillet meat. Make sure the butcher give you the bones of the sheep. Chop the meat finely, including some fat. Finely chop 3 shallots or 4 ounces of onion along with 4 ounces of mushrooms and a tablespoon of parsley. Mix all of these together with the meat and a teaspoon of dried thymeand salt and pepper. Place in a pan with ¼ pint of water, bring to a simmer and let it tick over for 5 minutes. Cool.

Fill your pastry cases, however you have constructed them, with the mixture and bake for 25-45 minutes at 200⁰C, depending on size.

Once whipped out of the oven, pour in gravy made from the bones. There is no instruction from Jane as to how to make this, but it’s pretty easy. Make a stock from bones, trimmings and some stock veg. Reduce it and mix into a roux of butter and flour to thicken it up.

#403 Raised Mutton Pies. These were great – I must admit I was a little dubious of the watery filling, but it really was delicious, the vegetables and herbs made the water into a delicious stock, which reduced during baking. They were so good, I added them to one of pop-up restaurant menus. 8/10.

#388 Sweet Lamb Pie from Westmorland

Happy New Year Grigsoners!

There are no Christmas recipes in English Food left to cook, but this one is close, being a cross between a savoury lamb pie and a sweet mince pie. It’s a recipe that has no introduction from Jane Grigson, though I feel it should, as it is pretty strange-sounding: a pie with a minced lamb, dried fruit and apple filling. Though it hails from Westmorland (a now defunct northern English county now made up of bits of Cumberland, Lancashire and Yorkshire), it seems to me to be a very typical pie baked during the medieval period, where it was very common to cook meat with lots of dried fruit and spices.

The Westmorland Coat of Arms

Why was this done? After all it seems to be an odd combination. Many people say that it is because heavy use of fruit and spices masked the taste of rancid and rotten meat. This, however, is a total myth; the reason meat was combined with spice, dried fruit and sugar was because all of these ingredients were extremely expensive. It was all showing off. They are – in my past experience – also a good combination: previous recipes like #87 Mrs Beeton’s Traditional Mincemeatand #328 Salmon in Pastry, with a Herb Saucefollow the same principle.

By the time of the Victorian era, none of these ingredients were particularly expensive, and this sort of food fell from favour, the only surviving remnant being the now totally meat-free mince pie.

This pie is known as a ‘plate pie’, which is still commonly made in Northern England. It is simply a pie made, not in a tin, but on a plate. The plates can be of typical (ovenproof!) ceramic or formed from enamel. Whichever you use, make sure it is deepish. My Mum still makes both sweet and savoury plate pies.

To make the pie, start with the filling. Mince together 6 ounces of lean, boned lamb with 3 ounces of lamb fat(you can the butcher for fat trimmings or keep your own and freeze them until you have accrued enough). Mix these together along with 6 ounces of apples, any will do, but I used tart Bramleys, 4 ounces each of currants, raisins and sultanas, 2 ounces of candied peel, the juice of one orange and half a lemon, 2 ounces of blanched, slivered almonds, 4 tablespoons of rum, a good pinch of salt, freshly ground black pepper, half a teaspoon each of mace and cinnamon and a quarter of a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. Phew.

Once well-mixed, give it a little taste and add more seasoning and spices if you wish.

Next, roll out enough shortcrust pastry and line the plate with it. Scatter over the filling and cover with more pastry, sealing the edges with beaten egg or water. Trim the edges and crimp, before glazing with beaten egg in the usual way.

Bake at 200⁰C for around 30 minutes.

Jane says that any remaining filling can be used to make small mince pies. I think I went one better however, and made sweet lamb Eccles cakes, which were such a success they ended up on my last Pop-Up Restaurant’s menu.

#388 Sweet Lamb Pie from Westmorland. I spotted this pie quite early, thinking it must be awful. Today I feel Jane Grigson has taught me well and I now knew this would be good. When you bite into it, you get the taste and aroma of lamb – so you know it is there – but the fruit and spice compliment it very well. There is no added sugar and the apples are still tart, so it is not sickly like a Christmas mince pie. Is it sweet? Is it savoury? It does not matter; these sorts of recipes are the crowning glory of English Food. Really lovely, go and make one. 8/10.

#369 Game, Rabbit or Chicken Pie

Here’s a raised pie that is versatile – you can use chicken, rabbit or any other game as its base. I went with game as I love cooking with it and love eating it even more. I’m giving you it just in time for the end of Britain’s game season. I would advise you go out and get some pheasant and pigeon right know – this was so good I have been making them in huge amounts for the market stall.

You can make pies of all sizes here – one massive one or many tiny ones. It’s up to you – look at the #282 Raised Pies post for more details on cooking methods. That post also goes through how to make the hot water pastry. If you want to make your own jellied stock, have a look at this post here.

For the filling, start by removing one pound of meat from the bones of your chosen game, rabbit or chicken and cut it into nice pieces. Keep any trimmings and bones.

Next, mince together 8 ounces of hard pork back fat (or fatback in America), 12 ounces of lean pork, 8 ounces of lean veal as well as any of the game, rabbit or chicken trimmings. You’ll also need 8 ounces of thinly sliced streaky bacon (unsmoked preferably); you use it to line the pie, but before all that, you’ll need to take 2 of the rashers and mince them. Mix all the meats together well – the most effective way to do this is to squeeze and squidge it through your fingers – incorporating 3 tablespoons of brandyor Madeira or 5 tablespoons of dry white wine as well as a good seasoning of salt and pepper as well as nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves plus a heaped tablespoon of chopped parsley.

Once you have made your raised crust – I did these ones in muffin tins and there was enough meat for just a shade under 40 pies! – line the pastry with the remaining bacon. Lid them and bake for the appropriate amount of time, my little ones took 35 minutes at 200⁰C (400⁰F). See this post here on how to make and bake a raised pie.

When cooked, pour in the jellied stock as normal (see this post here for help with that). Use the bones from your chosen star meat to make the stock.

Would you believe I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. What a plank I am.

#369 Game, Chicken or Rabbit Pie. As mentioned in my little introduction this pie was amazing, and by far the best of the raised pies so far; the pork and veal prevented the game flavours from becoming dominant, and the warming spices really gave the pie a taste and aroma air of old-fashioned England. I must try this pie with chicken and rabbit soon. I hope it is as good without the game! 10/10.