Chicken-and-Ham Picnic Hand Pies, Adapted from Beeton (1861)

Cooked meat, measured after preparation

The source uses the remains of cold roast chicken or fowl. It tells the cook to remove the skin and mince the white meat. The weight in this recipe likewise means prepared, cooked chicken, not a raw breast or a chicken weighed with its bones.

Ham is a smaller part of the filling. In the source, two ounces accompany every half pound of chicken. Keeping roughly that four-to-one relationship gives the ham a seasoning role without making it an equal second filling.

Cooked meat still needs careful handling. Use chicken that has been cooled and refrigerated safely, within its existing storage limit. Turning leftovers into pastry doesn't give older meat a new use-by date.

A thick filling for a small space

Cream, gravy, lemon and butter moisten Beeton's chopped chicken. A hand pie needs enough cohesion to stay inside while its edges are sealed, so the modern sauce is deliberately thick.

The sauce is cooked separately, cooled quickly and mixed with the cold meat. The chicken is therefore reheated in the oven once, rather than heated into a filling, cooled, then reheated again. That order also keeps hot sauce away from the pastry while you assemble the pies.

Cold filling helps the pastry keep its shape. If the mixture is warm enough to soften the butter layers, the seam becomes harder to seal and the base may sag when lifted. Have the filling ready before rolling the pastry.

Two circles and a clear edge

These pies use a separate round lid, not the folded half-circle of an apple turnover. A border free of filling gives the pastry something to seal against. A small central slit lets steam escape as the pie cooks.

Ready-made all-butter puff pastry makes the batch manageable. Beeton's book includes several pastry formulas, including versions with lard, but the modern product below is specified as all-butter. Check its weight and follow its thawing directions rather than warming it on the counter until soft.

Chill the finished pies before packing

A crisp-looking lid can hide a filling that is still warm. Give the pies room on a rack, then refrigerate promptly and let them chill fully before they go in the cool box. Don't pile warm pastries into a closed container to cool one another.

Take a rigid container, with enough room that the lids won't be pressed flat. These are perishable chicken pies, even though the pastry protects their shape. The insulated cold storage does the food-safety work on the journey; the crust does the carrying.

Explore the historical background and companion recipes in A Victorian Picnic, Tuned for Today.