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
paste-board, 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 pat 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.