Vintage Chicken Pot Pie

BY
MRS. F.L. GILLETTE
AND
HUGO ZIEMANN,
Steward of the White house
1887

Is there anything better than comfort food? We all have a different idea of what comfort food is, but I think one of my favorites will always be chicken pot pie. I ran across these vintage recipes and thought you might enjoy them. They are also a great reminder of how to use up some of your leftovers.

CHICKEN POT-PIE. No. 1.

Cut and joint a large chicken, cover with cold water, and let it boil gently until tender. Season with salt and pepper, and thicken the gravy with two tablespoonfuls of flour, mixed smooth with a piece of butter the size of an egg. Have ready nice light bread-dough, cut with the top of a wine-glass about a half an inch thick; let them stand half an hour and rise, then drop these into the boiling gravy. Put the cover on the pot closely, wrap a cloth around it, in order that no steam shall escape; and by no means allow the pot to cease boiling. Boil three-quarters of an hour.



CHICKEN POT-PIE. No. 2.

This style of pot-pie was made more in our grandmother's day than now, as most cooks consider that cooking crust so long destroys its spongy lightness, and renders it too hard and dry.

Take a pair of fine fowls, cut them up, wash the pieces, and season with pepper only. Make a light biscuit dough, and plenty of it, as it is always much liked by the eaters of pot-pie. Roll out the dough not very thin, and cut most of it into long squares. Butter the sides of a pot, and line them with dough nearly to the top. Lay slices of cold ham at the bottom of the pot, and then the pieces of fowl, interspersed all through with squares of dough and potatoes, pared and quartered. Pour in a quart of water. Cover the whole with a lid of dough, having a slit in the centre, through which the gravy will bubble up. Boil it steadily for two hours. Half an hour before you take it up, put in through the hole in the centre of the crust some bits of butter rolled in flour, to thicken the gravy. When done, put the pie on a large dish, and pour the gravy over it.

You may intersperse it all through with cold ham.

A pot-pie may be made of ducks, rabbits, squirrels or venison. Also of beefsteak. A beefsteak, or some porksteaks (the lean only), greatly improve a chicken pot-pie. If you use no ham, season with salt.