SC - Game pies

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

At 11:22 AM 5/15/97 -0600, you wrote:
>	I would love to see the game pie recipes (both) would you be 
>willing to post them?
>
>Sabia(Outlands)
>
I've been reading about the "bastardized beef in the form of Red Deer", and
have come to the conclusion that it was a common practice to marinate
venison before cooking. When the Deer Population died out from over-hunting,
(England) in period, the same method was applied to Beef in an attempt to
mask the beef flavor. Apparently, it was met with varying levels of success.
Some of the discussions on this list were helpful.

I'll give the originals, which we followed fairly closely, from Martha
Washington. Although it can be argued that she's "Not Period", I'd like to
point out that the frontspage of the book says "Martha Washington's Booke of
Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats: being a Family Manuscript, curiously copied
by an Unknown Hand in the Seventeenth Century, which was in her keeping from
1749, the time of her Marriage to Daniel Custis, to 1799, at which time she
gave it to Eleanor Parke Custis, her Granddaughter, on the occaision of her
marriage to Lawrence Lewis."  This puts a great many of the recipes within
our grasp (whatever date we individually decide our "grasp" is), and it is
fairly clear to me that some of these recipes are indeed direct from England
during our period---otherwise why on earth would someone in the colonies
want to fake "Red Dear" when venison was so readily available here? I have
chosen to use recipes that have strong elements of other period practices,
and it was my job to sort this out for myself before presenting these
recipes for redaction. This discussion could take long hours to resolve, so
I'll just go right to the recipes. Don't shoot me, I'm just the piano player.

To Make Red Dear of Beef  rcpt 48

First take a piece of young buttock of beefe & larde it. Yn season it wth
nutmegg, ginger, pepper & salt. Yn lay it in calrret wine, & a little wine
vinegar for a day or two, then put it in a coarse paste with a good deale of
butter, & when you set it into ye oven, put in the vinegar & let it be well
soaked. A neats tongue soe seasoned is excellent good meat, & allsoe veal.

Another Way To Make Beef Like Red Deare   rcpt 49

take a piece of ye clod of beefe next ye legge & cut ye sinews from it; then
put it in a clean cloth & beat it extremely; yn lard it very well, & season
it with nutmegg, pepper, & salt; then lay it on a clean dish & pour upon it
halfe a pinte of white wine & as much wine vinegar. let it lye insteepe al
night, & ye next day poure away ye vinegar & wine. put ye meat in a round
coffin of paste crust & lay s or 3 bay leaves under and as many above it.
put in a store of butter, & let it stand 6 hours in ye oven. make a hole in
ye lid & fill it up with butter when it comes outof ye oven.

NOw, we adulterated these recipes for several reasons: I have a small supply
of real venison, enabling me to put some in each pie. So we used approx.2
lbs beef and 1 lb venison, which we cut up to mingle. Then we followed the
recipes as we chose:  Claret is a sweet wine, so it makes an excellent
marinade. We added nutmeg, ginger, salt, pepper, and red wine vinegar. The
meat needs to be wrung out fairly dry before putting into the pastry. Bay
leaves go above and below it, as stated--we used 6-8 fresh ones.It is then
dotted with 2 tbsp. butter and a little vinegar poured on (we used my own
herbed vinegar, but red-wine vinegar would do). We made a hot-water pastry
with whole wheat flour, butter, salt, and hot water, and raised a coffin to
put the meat in (it took about 1 1/2 lbs flour). This type of pastry hardens
when cool but uncooked (reminiscent of play-doh), enabling the filled crust
to stand alone like a semi-soft box (coffin) with a lid. Had it been left to
chill it would have hardened. It was baked at 350 for about 1 1/2 hours, and
was quite juicy and wondeful. When we do this for real, we'll give it a
longer marinade time. It only had 2 hours due to time constraints.

To Season a Venison Pasty  rcpt 51

Take out ye bones & turn ye fat syde down upon a board. Yn take ye pill of 2
leamons & break them in pieces as long as yr finger & thrust them into every
hole of yr venison. then take 2 ounces of beaten pepper & thrice as much
salt, mingle it, then wring out ye juice of leamon into ye pepper & salt &
season it, first takeing out ye leamon pills haveing layn soe a night. then
paste it with gross pepper layd on ye top & good store of butter or mutton suet.

This is straight forward and quite tasty: we again mixed small chunks of
beef and venisonin in a (pounds) 2:1 proportion. We seasoned with a marinade
of fresh lemon peel, lemon juice, salt--we used rather less than called
for--and pepper. This sat about 4 hours. Again, it needs to be wrung out
(pressed) pretty throroughly, as the meat/ venison retained much of the
marinade. Again, we raised a wheat coffin and put in the meat mixture, and
sprinkled with pepper and lemon zest rather heavily, a sprinkle of lemon
juice,  and dotted with about 2 tbsp. butter before closing the pastry. It
was baked the same as the above pie.  This one was my favorite.

I'd like to note that these redacted recipes are the creation of the cook's
guild of Endless hills, and not specifically my own. I had a hand in
supervising (and tasting!), but these were made by novices, with truly
wonderful results. They did a fabulous job....some of them were redacting
for the very first time.

'Raising coffins' also belongs to another discussion another day, but for
those who have not tried hot-water pastry, I urge you to experiment. Imagine
making pastry without any flour flying all over the counter/floor/cook! You
don't need pie plates (which render your creations "tarts" and not pies),
and the contents of the pies are generally denser and more satisfying (at
least to my brit-blood palate). Besides, they're fun to make, thus appealing
to the kitchen hands who're looking a little bored.

Respectfully submitted this 16th day of May with the help of little Siusan
nic Ghille Brighde, aged 2.

Aoife