Recipe - A Grete Pye

1 pound Shortcrust pastry
1 Egg white, beaten
Until liquid
1 pound Boned breasts of chicken
Pigeon or wild duck and/or
Saddle of hare or rabbit
(not stewing meat)
Salt and black pepper
1 pound Minced beef
2 tablespoon Shredded suet
3 Hardboiled egg
Yolks crumbled
One fourth teaspoon Each ground
Cinnamon and mace
And a pinch of ground cloves
1 ounce Stoned cooking dates chopped
1 ounce Currants
2 ounce Stoned prunes soaked
And drained
One half cup Beef stock
1 tablespoon Rice flour or cornflour

No Christmas feast in medieval times was complete without a 'grete pye'. 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. Use just over half the pastry to line a 23cm/9inch pie plate.
Brush the inside with some of the egg white. Skin the pieces of breast and
other meat if necessary and parboil them gently in salted water for 1015
minutes. Drain and leave to cool. Mix together in a bowl the minced beef,
suet, salt and pepper to taste, the egg yolks and half the spice mixture.
Add the rest of the spices to the dried fruit in another bowl. Slice the
parboiled meat. Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas Mark 7. Add 1 or 2
tablespoons of the beef stock to the rice flour or cornflour in a small
saucepan and cream them together; then add the remaining stock and stir
over gentle heat until slightly thickened. Keep aside. Cover the bottom of
the pastry case with half the mince mixture. Arrange the cut or sliced up meat in a
flat layer on top. Scatter the chopped spiced fruit over it and cover with
the remaining mince. Pour the thickened stock over the lot. Roll out the
remaining pastry into a round to make a lid for the pie. Brush the rim of
the case with a little more egg white and cover with the lid. Press the
edges to seal, and make escape slits for steam. Decorate with the pastry
trimmings and glaze with egg white. Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the
heat to 160C/325F/Gas Mark 3 and bake for 4550 minutes longer. Serves 6 to
8. Grete pyes. Take faire yonge beef, And suet of a fatte beste, or of
Motton, and hak all this on a borde small; and caste therto pouder of peper
and salt; and whan it is small hewen, put hit in a bolle. And medle hem
well; then make a faire large Cofyn, and couche som of this stuffur in.
Then take Capons, Hennes, Mallardes, Connynges, and parboile hem clene;
take wodekokkes, teles, grete briddes, and plom hem in a boiling pot; And
then couche al this fowle in the Coffyn, And put in euerych of hem a
quantite of pouder of peper and salt. Then take mary, harde yolkes of
egges, Dates cutte in ij peces, reisons of coraunce, prunes, hole clowes,
hole maces, Canell and saffron. But first, whan thoug hast cowched all thi
foule, ley the remenaunt of thyne other stuffur of beef abought hem, as
thou thenkest goode; and then strawe on hem this: dates, mary, and reysons,
&c. And then close thi Coffyn with a lydde of the same paast, And putte
hit in the oven, And late hit bake ynough; but be ware, or thou close hit,
that there come no saffron nygh the brinkes thereof, for then hit wol
neuer close.

From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at www.synapse.com/~gemini