Chicken or Fowl Pie

Ingredients

• 2 small fowls or 1 large one
• white pepper and salt to taste
• 1/2 teaspoonful grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoonful pounded mace
• forcemeat No. 417
• a few slices of ham
• 3 hard-boiled eggs
• 1/2 pint water
• puff crust

Instructions

1. Skin and cut up the fowls into joints, and put the neck, leg, and backbones in a stewpan, with a little water, an onion, a bunch of savoury herbs, and a blade of mace;
2. let these stew for about an hour, and, when done, strain off the liquor: this is for gravy.
3. Put a layer of fowl at the bottom of a pie-dish, then a layer of ham, then one of forcemeat and hard-boiled eggs cut in rings; between the layers put a seasoning of pounded mace, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.
4. Proceed in this manner until the dish is full, and pour in about 1/2 pint of water; border the edge of the dish with puff crust, put on the cover, ornament the top, and glaze it by brushing over it the yolk of an egg.
5. Bake from 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hour, should the pie be very large, and, when done, pour in, at the top, the gravy made from the bones.
6. If to be eaten cold, and wished particularly nice, the joints of the fowls should be boned, and placed in the dish with alternate layers of forcemeat; sausage-meat may also be substituted for the forcemeat, and is now very much used.
7. When the chickens are boned, and mixed with sausage-meat, the pie will take about 2 hours to bake.
8. It should be covered with a piece of paper when about half-done, to prevent the paste from being dried up or scorched.