Chicken Pie

Pâté de Poulet à l’Anglaise (Chicken Pie) teaches the architecture of a covered pie. One true thing before you touch a pan: don't brown the chicken. This is a fricassée enclosed beneath pastry, and its delicacy comes from seasoned raw meat baking gently in consommé, not from a roasted fond.

The source assumed a saucier with chicken consommé and strong gravy always ready, a pastry bench rolling puff paste, and enough hands to joint the fowl while someone else watched the stockpot. At home, good prepared consommé, all-butter puff pastry, and unsalted chicken stock reduced to a few concentrated spoonfuls do the work. It needs no salamander because the gilded pastry takes its bronze in the oven. The entry is already close to a home quantity, so I have fixed its single fowl at a practical size for four and kept the three onions, 1½ ounces of mushrooms, 5 ounces of bacon, four yolks, and full veal lining in their original proportions. Homemade puff paste and laborious clarification are brigade scaffolding; the veal, bacon, yolks, three-quarter bath of consommé, and final strong gravy are the dish and must stay.

The finished pie carries a deep butter-gold lid over tender chicken, soft veal, salty ribbons of bacon, and yolks made rich by the clear cooking liquor. One cook, one stove, one evening. Cool the mushrooms and consommé, wipe the dish rim completely dry, and seal the pastry collar firmly. That seal is the step that decides the pie.