OYSTER PIE
(Directions for Cookery, 1851)
Make a puff-paste, in the proportion of a pound and a half of fresh butter to two pounds of sifted flour.
Roll it out rather thick, into two sheets. Butter a deep dish, and line the bottom and sides of it with paste.
Fill it up with crusts of bread for the purpose of supporting the lid while it is baking, as the oysters will be too much done if they are cooked in the pie.
Cover it with the other sheet of paste, having first buttered the flat rim of the dish.
Notch the edges of the pie handsomely, or ornament them with loaves of paste which you may form with tin cutters made for the purpose.
Make a little slit in the middle of the lid, and stick firmly into it a paste tulip or other flower.
Put the dish into a moderate oven, and while the paste is baking prepare the oysters, which should be large and fresh.
Put them into a stew-pan with half their liquor thickened with yolk of egg boiled hard and grated, enriched with pieces of butter rolled in bread crumbs, and seasoned with mace and nutmeg.
Stew the oysters five minutes.
When the paste is baked, carefully take off the lid, remove the pieces of bread, and put in the oysters and gravy.
Replace the lid, and send the pie to table warm.
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