CHESHIRE PORK-PIE

2-3 lb. lean pork
Puff paste or pie dough
Pepper
Salt
Nutmeg or mace
Apples, cored and sliced
Sugar, about 1 oz.
1/2 pint sweet cider or wine
Butter
1 egg, beaten

Cut two or three pounds of lean fresh pork into strips as long and as wide as your middle finger. Line a buttered dish with puff-paste; put in a layer of pork seasoned with pepper, salt, and nutmeg or mace; next a layer of juicy apples, sliced and covered with about an ounce of white sugar; then more pork, and so on until you are ready for the paste cover, when pour in half a pint of sweet cider or wine, and stick bits of butter all over the top. Cover with a thick lid of puff-paste, cut a slit in the top, brush over with beaten egg, and bake an hour and a half.

This is an English dish, and is famous in the region from which it takes its name. It is much liked by those who have tried it, and is considered by some to be equal to our mince-pie.

From Common Sense in the Household by Marion Harland, New York, 1871

Comment: Sadly enough, the once massive range of meat pies which made up a very long tradition in European (particularly English) cooking has faded to where the only remaining specimens are tasteless, flabby things featuring chicken or turkey and found in grocers' freezer compartments. They are consumed largely by college students and others of the poor and/or cooking-averse persuasion. Pork and apple is a traditional combination, and this recipe would probably feed twice as many people for much more than twice the enjoyment as the nasty pre-made versions mentioned above.

"Sweet cider" simply means the plain unfermented variety, as opposed to "hard" or alcoholic versions of the fluid.

Return to Recipe Index