Veal pie

Kalvepostej

A lovely medieval veal pie with hard boiled eggs spiced with period typical spices. The recipe is from c. 1390, so it is indefinabel medieval.

I found this lovely recipe for this veal pie filling. As most medieval meat pies, the meat is cooked and spiced before it is placed in the pie casing – the coffin as it was called. The pies were meat pies were both a sophisticated noble dish and a way to preserve meat left overs. They were eaten at the high table and used as travel food or as good gifts for neighbors – for instance as maternity gift. This veal pie is really filling and beautiful. It is quite an impressive centerpiece for a dinner party or a great addition to medieval feast.

My friend has decorated the pie with a cow head, as it was customarily to decorate the pies with some indication of what the filling was – especially if you were serving multiple pies.

You can bake it either in a oven proof dish with a lid of crust or in a coffin (casing) of pie crust. I suggest using my postej crust and short crust recipes for this. You will need powder fort

The source

The original source: Forme of Cury, c. 1390

Tartlettes. Take veel ysode and grinde it smale. Take harde eyren isode and ygrand, & do pero with prunes hoole, dates icourue, pynes and raisons coraunne, hoole spices & powdour, sugur & salt; and make a little coffyn and do þis fars þerinne. Couer it & bake it & serue it forth.

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Veal postej

Course Main Dish, Pie & postej

Cuisine Historical cooking, Medieval

Ingredients

• 500 grams minced veal or beef
• 2 hard boiled eggs chopped
• 100 grams prunes
• 100 grams dates
• 50 grams pine nuts toasted
• 50 grams currants or raisins
• 1 tablespoon (powder fort) see link in the description
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 250 milliliters water optional

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 200 C
2. Mix the minced meat, the chopped eggs, the fruits and the nuts together.
3. Mix in the sugar, salt and water if needed. The consistency should be like that for meat balls.
4. Let the mixture sit while you roll out the dough for the crust.
5. Prepare the the crust. Remember to oil the tin you are using, so the finished pie will slip.
6. Add the mixture to the pie and add a lid of crust. Add steam holes to the lid, so the pie don’t crack weirdly.
7. Bake it for about 35-45 minutes at 200 C or until the crust is golden.

Recipe Notes

How to make powder fort. I suggest using my postej crust and short crust recipes for this.

Source: Forme of Cury, c. 1390