It's hot water suet pastry, and mutton.
Well, nowadays folks seem to mostly use lard, but traditionally it was suet.
Cook your mutton before you make your pastry. The pastry needs to be moulded while it's still hot.
For the filling. Either buy mutton from the butcher and mince it yourself, or hope that the butcher will mince it for you. Double minced makes for a
better pie.
Mutton usually has enough fat in it to make it brownable in it's own jus. To that add spice of choice. Usually it's ground pepper and mace, but nowadays, well it could be anything.
Rosemary was an old fashioned addition when imported spices were really expensive.
Brown the mutton, add stock (the juice from mirepoix if you don't have a stock pot going) or just use a stock cube....or left over gravy from a roast, and simmer until the mutton is cooked.
Strain it with a slotted spoon to add to the pie, you don't want it running, but you don't want it dry.
A hot water crust will hold liquid while it cooks through and sets, and it'll keep it's shape while it does so.
You need (sorry, my recipe is ancient, it's pounds and ounces)
A pound of decent quality plain flour.
2 level teaspoonsful of salt.
6 oz of suet, or dripping (or lard)
A very scant half pint of water.
Put the suet into the water in a pot and heat it until the fat is melted; it will be pretty hot. Some folks bring it up to a boil.
Sieve the flour into a bowl with the salt, make a well in the middle and pour the hot water/fat liquid into that hollow.
Mix the flour and liquid and make sure all the flour is incorporated in. It will need to be gently kneaded. Not an awful lot, don't make it go fatty looking,
and you need to use it hot.
It won't roll out like shortcrust or puff pastry. It's basically a partially cooked dough
It is traditionally moulded either into (the commercial scotch pies) a mould, or raised up around a mould (the commercial big pork pies)
Into a mould makes for thinner pastry shells.
My Granny made her pies in largish ramekin dishes (we use the dishes to make potted hough too) but if you mould the pies in muffin tins, I know they're smaller, but they work well and let you thin out the pastry so it's not as thick as it is on a pork pie.
Stick the lid on with water, mind and leave a hole in it for the steam to escape. Folks didn't waste eggs for egg wash on something so domestic as these little pies, they were left pretty plain, but you can use egg if you like. Mind these are peasant food, like cornish pasties and the like.
Bake in a middling hot-ish oven (somewhere around 180C) for half and hour or so. Have a look at them, if they look cooked, fine, if they're needing longer, leave them in. If they're browning to black at the edges cover them with a bit of parchment.
Everybody's recipe's different.
This is how I made them, and it works, but whether it's your 'old school Scotch pies', I do not know.
My English cousin comes up to visit. He remembers my Grannies pies, but he loved the ones she occasionally bought from the Co. We spent an entire week trailing round every wee bakery and local baker's tearooms as he tried to find the same pie taste as those Co pies he'd loved as a wee boy
Best of luck with yours
M
p.s. I ought to have put in the cuts.
Shoulder runner cut, or Gigot, shank end.
Basically cuts that can be braised....cooked long and slow. Not expensive gigot or loin.
I haven't a clue what to ask an English butcher for though.....it's the shoulder at the top of the ribs nearest the neck, or the lower part of the upper back legs. Not the hough/shin.
Sorry Samon, my cooking is very parochial sometimes.
