Recipe

A Happy Home Recipe Recipe

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Ingredients

2 oz Stoned prunes soaked
1 lb Minced beef
1 oz Stoned cooking dates sliced
Until liquid
2 tb Shredded suet
Cinnamon & mace
1 Egg white, beaten
3 Hard-boiled egg
1 lb Boned breasts of chicken
1 lb Shortcrust pastry
1 tb Rice flour or cornflour
& drained
Salt & black pepper
& a pinch of ground cloves
Yolks crumbled
Pigeon or wild duck and/ Saddle of hare or rabbit
1/2 c Beef stock
1/4 ts Each ground
1 oz Currants

Directions

Step #1 No Christmas feast in medieval times was complete without a 'grete pye'.
Step #2 In some recipes, it could contain many varied meats, but quite often only two or three different kinds were suggested; change the meats suggested here if you wish.
Step #3 Use just over half the pastry to line a 23-cm/9-inch pie plate.
Step #4 Brush the inside with some of the egg white.
Step #5 Skin the pieces of breast & other meat if necessary and parboil them carefully in salted water for 10-15 mins.
Step #6 Drain and leave to cool.
Step #7 Mix together in a bowl the minced beef, suet, salt and pepper to taste, the egg yolks & half the spice mixture.
Step #8 Add the rest of the spices to the dried fruit in another bowl.
Step #9 Slice the parboiled meat.
Step #10 Pre-heat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas Mark 7.
Step #11 Add 1 or 2 tbsps of the beef stock to the rice flour or cornflour in a small saucepan & cream them together; then add the remaining stock & stir over gentle heat until slightly thickened.
Step #12 Keep aside.
Step #13 Cover the bottom of the pastry case with half the mince mixture.
Step #14 Arrange the sliced meat in a flat layer on top.
Step #15 Scatter the sliced spiced fruit over it & cover with the remaining mince.
Step #16 Pour the thickened stock over the lot.
Step #17 Roll out the remaining pastry into a round to make a lid for the pie.
Step #18 Brush the rim of the case with a little more egg white & cover with the lid.
Step #19 Press the edges to seal, & make escape slits for steam.
Step #20 Decorate with the pastry trimmings & glaze with egg white.
Step #21 Bake for 15 mins, then reduce the heat to 160C/325F/Gas Mark 3 & bake for 45-50 mins longer.
Step #22 Serves 6 to 8.
Step #23 Grete pyes.
Step #24 Take faire yonge beef, or of Motton, & suet of a fatte beste, & hak all this on a borde small; & caste therto pouder of peper & salt; & whan it is small hewen, put hit in a bolle.
Step #25 & medle hem well; then make a faire large Cofyn, & couche som of this stuffur in.
Step #26 Then take Capons, Connynges, Mallardes, and parboile hem clene; take wodekokkes, grete briddes, Hennes, teles, & plom hem in a boiling pot; & then couche al this fowle in the Coffyn, & put in euerych of hem a quantite of pouder of peper & salt.
Step #27 Then take mary, harde yolkes of egges, prunes, hole maces, reisons of coraunce, Dates cutte in ij peces, hole clowes, Canell and saffron.
Step #28 But first, mary, whan thoug hast cowched all thi foule, and reysons, as thou thenkest goode; & then strawe on hem this: dates, ley the remenaunt of thyne other stuffur of beef a-bought hem, &c.
Step #29 & then close thi Coffyn with a lydde of the same paast, or thou close hit, & putte hit in the oven, that there come no saffron nygh the brinkes there-of, & late hit bake ynough; but be ware, for then hit wol neuer close.
Step #30 --.
Enjoy the A HAPPY HOME RECIPE recipe