These pies are always made with a standing crust. Put into a sauce-pan
one pound of butter cut up, and a pint and a half of water; stir it
while it is melting, and let it come to a boil. Then skim off whatever
milk or impurity may rise to the top. Have ready four pounds of flour
sifted into a pan. Make a hole in the middle of it, and pour in the
melted butter while hot. Mix it with a spoon to a stiff paste, (adding
the beaten yolks of three or four eggs,) and then knead it very well
with your hands, on the pasteboard, keeping it dredged with flour till
it ceases to be sticky. Then set it away to cool.
Split a large goose, and a fowl down the back, loosen the flesh all
over with a sharp knife, and take out all the bones. Parboil a smoked
tongue; peel it and cut off the root. Mix together a powdered nutmeg, a
quarter of an ounce of powdered mace, a tea-spoonful of pepper, and a
tea-spoonful of salt, and season with them the fowl and the goose.
Roll out the paste near an inch thick, and divide it into three pieces.
Cut out two of them of an oval form for the top and bottom; and the
other into a long straight piece for the sides or walls of the pie.
Brush the paste all over with beaten white of egg, and set on the
bottom the piece that is to form the wall, pinching the edges together,
and cementing them with white of egg. The bottom piece must be large
enough to turn up a little round the lower edge of the wall piece,
to which it must be firmly joined all round. When you have the crust
properly fixed, so as to be baked standing alone without a dish, put in
first the goose, then the fowl, and then the tongue. Fill up what space
is left with pieces of the flesh of pigeons, or of partridges, quails,
or any game that is convenient. There must be no bones in the pie. You
may add also some bits of ham, or some force-meat balls. Lastly, cover
the other ingredients with half a pound of butter, and put on the top
crust, which, of course, must be also of an oval form to correspond
with the bottom. The lid must be placed not quite on the top edge of
the wall, but an inch and a half below it. Close it very well, and
ornament the sides and top with festoons and leaves cut out of paste.
Notch the edges handsomely, and put a paste flower in the centre. Glaze
the whole with beaten yolk of egg, and bind the pie all round with a
double fold of white paper. Set it in a regular oven, and bake it four
hours.
This is one way of making the celebrated goose pies that it is
customary in England to send as presents at Christmas. They are eaten
at luncheon, and if the weather is cold, and they are kept carefully
covered up from the air, they will be good for two or three weeks; the
standing crust assisting to preserve them.