“Birk Hall Excursion Pie.”
A cold Game pie. This requires 4 grouse or 6 partridge to make a very good pie. If you take grouse, use the fillets only, and as large as you can get without bones. Make clear or thick soup of the rest of the birds. Lay the grouse or partridge fillets in the pie-dish with a sliced onion and some chopped truffles; season, and cover with a first stock; then add the paste and remember to make a hole as “chimney” in the centre of the paste under the centre ornament or “rose,” to let out unwholesome steam.
For the paste take ½ lb. flour, 4 ozs. butter or some dripping, 1 egg, a little salt, and as much water as will make it into a stiff paste; work it well. Prepare the crust of this, and put it on.
Put the pie to bake in the oven. In 1½ hours the paste will be a nice brown. If it is so, the pastry is done enough, but the birds will require ½ hour’s additional simmering to make them tender (i.e., 2 hours in all), so cover the paste quickly with paper to prevent its catching; and if the oven bottom is cool, as it is at Birk Hall, put the pie on that, but if it is hot (as in many ovens), then put the pie on the top of the hot plate, or wherever it is cool, to simmer the pie for the additional ½ hour. Take off the paper and replace the “rose.” Serve cold for an excursion or for breakfast.
For another pie use grouse fillets and thigh only, drawing down the carcase and drumsticks with a slice of lean ham, 2 or 3 sliced onions, sliced carrots, a slice of celery, a little parsley, very little pepper, no salt let, there be ½ pt. when strained. Put half into the dish with the fillets and a little chopped shallot or onion, if shallot cannot be got. The pastry and baking to he the same as for the Birk Hall pie, but when the pie is taken out of the oven,