Chapter 55 – When There’s an Abundance of Donations
Walter gathered his belongings after Mr. Anderson dismissed the class.
He took his time; he would be attending the tuition class later and would not be leaving the domus until sunset. In contrast to his leisure, those who still had to work in the factory during the cold winter hurriedly packed their things and rushed to the dining hall. They would have their soup there, then leave with offal pies in hand – eating them on the way to their workplaces. A grain-filled warmer bag was strapped snugly across their chest, helping them fend off the cold.
“I don’t think it’s offal in the pies,” Pocco said. “It tastes more like minced meat.”
“But Miss Jade had always used scraps; they’re the cheapest,” Walter replied. “Not that she’d use anything bad, but still the cheapest cuts. I heard the bakehouse spend hours soaking them to improve the taste. It probably just tastes so good that you’re mistaking it for minced meat.”
“No, I know what the domus’s offal pies taste like. We’ve been eating them ever since the weather started to get cold!” Pocco retorted. “It tastes different lately. Trust me, it’s different!”
“Different or not, we should just appreciate what Miss Jade had done for us,” Walter shrugged as he left the classroom with Pocco.
A bag was slung over Pocco’s shoulder while Walter shoved his things into his pocket. The bag was a gift from the school; students had made it themselves using needles and scrap fabric provided by the tuition class. The materials came either from old, unused stock in the domus storeroom or were gathered by the three older students responsible for running the school’s stall after closing hours.
Not everyone in the school had been given such a bag. Miss Jade had made that very clear in the class:
“Although these are just some ugly-looking bags made of scrap fabrics, thieves and bullies might think there are coins inside and come for you. You and I, and everyone here, know there’s nothing in them except for your notebook, pencil, and some personal things that even a ragpicker wouldn’t want. So I must make sure you’re safe before giving you one. Alright, those who fit the criteria may register your name with me. First, those who don’t work in town…”
Everyone understood her concern. Though nearly all of them – including Walter, a newsboy who would return to his job once the cold weather broke – wanted a bag of their own, most held back, and only those who met the criteria raised their hands.
“I sure hope that one day, I can just give each of you the things I think are necessary without worrying if they’ll put you in danger…” Walter had once overheard Miss Jade murmur that under her breath with a sigh.
She had kept her promise from the iron oven project at the beginning of the semester. The food had improved. They had new paper and notebooks for class, as well as dictionaries and storybooks in the domus library. He had also heard that she planned to give each of them a blanket if she managed to earn enough from the sales.
Walter hoped he could make handcrafts that would help Miss Jade sell better at the bazaar.
By the time he and Pocco reached the dining hall – only five minutes after class – some students had already finished their soup, left their seats, and trotted out of the domus with two pies in hand… Two pies?
“Custard pie!” Pocco exclaimed as he picked up his meal tray at the frontmost table. The tray the nun handed him held a set of meals consisting of a bowl of soup, an offal pie – which he strongly suspected was actually a meat pie – one biscuit, and something he had never seen served in the domus before.
A slice of custard pie! Made with eggs!
The last time he had eaten an egg was during the spring ploughing season, when they were plentiful and his Mama had been given a few as extra wages by the farm steward.
Walter observed the pie in awe. As a child from a ragged family, he could not even afford to dream of such a delicate desert. The only time he had tasted anything like it was on a Harvest Day a few years ago. The domus had received an unusually generous donation and decided to prepare something special for the villages who came for the feast. It had been custard pie – rich and heavenly – and Walter and Pocco had been among the fortunate few to receive a slice.
Pocco took a large bite while Walter was still staring. He was eager for the sweet, smooth filling and the crispness of the crush. Yet after the first bite, he tilted his head and paused, as though considering something. He took a second bite, this time more carefully, using every sense to test it with deliberate attention.
Then, he reached a conclusion and declared, “This isn’t a custard pie.”
“Are you blind? That’s clearly custard pie.” Walter rolled his eyes and took a bite.
The filling was mildly sweet and smooth, supported by the crust… though the crust itself was harder than he remembered. It was the same kind the bakehouse used for offal pies, not the buttery sort he had once tasted. Thinking back to the tallow used in the winter chips project, Walter guessed the dough had likely been made with reused tallow.
“No, it’s different!” Pocco insisted, already on his third bite. “The sweetness comes from malt, like in the biscuit. There’s no milk smell, so it must be with water. And the sprinkles on top, they’re not nutmeg. They’re a bit red… beetroot powder, maybe? And the custard does not taste like custard!”
Walter frowned. “Do you even think before you speak? Listen to yourself – offal pies taste no offal, custard pies taste no custard, bah!”
“It’s true…” Pocco pouted, his eyes slightly reddened from the argument. “It tastes different!”
Josh, who happened to pass by at their exchange, widened his eyes slightly before inclining his head toward them. “Sharp tongue you have here, Pocco.”
“Huh?” The two younger boys turned toward him.
Josh was the most well-known student in the entire school. Of them all, only he had dared to ask Miss Jade to take him on as her apprentice – and he had succeeded!
His success had encouraged others to volunteer themselves, but Miss Jade had politely declined. She said, “With my current cash flow, I can’t afford more than one pupil. But don’t worry, I’ll still try my best to teach ya’ll some money-making skills. Just wait and see!”
Thus, as her one and only apprentice, Josh had drawn plenty of envy. Many students – especially the girls – had spoken ill of him behind his back. He paid them no mind, and as the tuition classes grew busier, the gossip gradually faded. Most of their time was now spent learning new skills and making crafts, rather than talking about him.
In contrast to those who envied him, some students admired Josh’s resolve and sought to stay on good terms with him. From time to time, he needed to assign simple tasks on Miss Jade’s behalf. Walter and Pocco were among those who kept close.
“Offal pies taste no offal, custard pies taste no custard,” Josh said quietly to the boys. “Your conclusion is partly correct.”
Walter gasped. “Truly?”
Pocco pumped his fist in the air. “I told you I was right!”
Josh chuckled. “The offal pies have minced meat added. The butchers donated the portions they couldn’t sell after a few days, and the amount has been increasing daily. We’ve received donations from more than one butcher now, Sister Geenia had already tried her best – smoking, salting, putting them into pies, and making sausages. So next week, you’ll likely have sausage soup or boiled sausages as an extra treat – just like the custard pie today.”
“You sure this is custard pie?” Pocco asked.
“Well, to be precise, Miss Jade called it an egg tart. The technique is slightly different from custard pie.” Josh winked. “But she chose to keep quiet about the name. The difference isn’t obvious, and she doesn’t want to cause confusion or draw attention, as it might slow things down.”
“Slow… oh,” Walter understood at once. If everyone started asking what an egg tart was while receiving their slice, the queue would stall. The students would spend more time discussing the food than finishing their meals and leaving the dining hall – and some of them needed to rush to work. Time was tickling.
The two boys nodded and kept their discovery to themselves. Josh gave them a small nod before returning to his task – reporting to Miss Jade about the bakehouse schedule. As he had said, the butchers’ donations had increased to the point that they were now making meat-and-offal pies instead of pure offal pies. Even so, more meat had arrived at the domus just minutes ago; it was more than their domus could handle.
“What?” Jade froze mid-bite, a piece of egg tart still in her hand. “Sister Geenia didn’t tell me it was today. I thought it’d be a few days later…”
“Well, it’s hard to predict what will be donated, when, or how much,” Josh replied with a shrug. “Sister Geenia and Sister Miriam are sorting the barrels of meat. We received an entire cart today, Sensei. Sister Geenia is out of recipes, and we certainly don’t have enough space to dry sausages or enough salt to salt them. She supposed you’d have some suggestions. So, what should we do? ”
“Um… patties? Meatballs?” Overwhelmed by the amount of meat and determined not to let it go to waste, Jade dug frantically through her memories for ways to use the meat.
“We’re already frying chips; we can fry and sell meatballs too,” She began. “Yes, we’ll sell them, or we won’t be able to finish them before they go bad. But we’d need another stove, another pot, and a whole lot of tallow… Pure meat won’t taste good, so we must add something… Maybe mix in starch and mashed potatoes, then smash the meat with rolling pins – we don’t have many knives, so using sticks to pound it is better than sourcing more – then season it with salt and onions…”
Watching Jade lose herself in thought, Josh took out his notebook and began scribbling.
“Do we need eggs? Nah, just water will do; eggs stay in the domus kitchen for students. Oh, and maybe parboil them in the domus first before frying, like the chips… Or, maybe, we just sell boiled meatballs and don’t fry them? A penny for five balls on a skewer sounds reasonable, save time on rendering tallows… Then we could add some egg and starch to the leftover water, and turn it into some kind of soup. Should taste fine…”
Josh quickly recorded the fragments of the recipe as she muttered. What he captured were merely random steps awaiting for experiments.
He wasn’t surprised by her absorption in brainstorming; when it came to anything beyond pastries, Sensei rarely had a clear recipe.
She could recite the exact ratio of butter to cream for frosting, even though they could not afford butter for now. But when it came to delicacies other than pastries, she struggled to produce a proper list of ingredients. Still she would somehow piece together what was needed – perhaps from faded memories, since she had lost much of them after being saved from drowning – along with a vague sense of the techniques involved.
“An entire cart? Wow…” Jade rubbed her cheek and let out a soft “tsk”. “I’ll put Clara in charge of the tuition class today and test the meatball recipe with you…”
“It’s alright, Sensei, I can handle it.” Josh’s words stopped her. “If I can’t, Sister Geenia and Sister Miriam can take care of the cooking. Sensei, the tuition class needs you today, especially the greeting card project. I think they came up with something yesterday before dismissal. They’ll want to present it to you.”
“...Okay.” Jade sighed, “I thought I’d have more free time during winter, so I could teach you how to make puff pastry. Winter’s the best time for layering dough.”
There were no refrigerators in this era, and ice was expensive outside of winter. Modern puff pastry required frequent chilling to keep the butter from blending into the dough, preserving that flaky, fragrant texture. Jade had planned to teach Josh while the weather was cold enough to at least show him the layering technique using tallow instead of butter – but the tuition class had disrupted the whole plan.
“It’s alright, Sensei. I can learn that from you later,” Josh said with a smile. “But the chance to get a place at a charity bazaar held at the Silver Acorn? That’s rare. It might even be a one-time event – who knows if the Dowager Countess will host it again next year? If we seize this opportunity and establish our school’s name for fine handicrafts, we could secure orders and a steady income for years. That’s why, Sensei, leave the meatballs to me, and go prepare the others for the bazaar.”
Jade shot him a sidelong glance. “You’re pretty confident Lord Ashborne will convince the Dowager Countess to host the bazaar at the Silver Acorn, huh?”
“I don’t see why not.” Josh smiled faintly, recalling the nobleman’s generosity as he wrote the cheque to fund their classroom. “He’s the kindest nobleman I’ve ever met, Sensei. Trust me, I’ve met people from other parishes. Their landlords are not nearly so friendly.”
“I see.” Jade made no further comment on their landlord’s kindness. Instead, she added a few more details to the rough recipe for Josh to test out.
“Smashing the meat longer will make the starch meatballs bouncier,” Josh noted, marking the line with a star. “We definitely don’t want them bouncy.”
Jade blinked, utterly baffled. “Why? Bouncy tastes great, no?”
The East Asian spent hours just to make sure fish and meatballs were springy enough to bounce like ping pong balls… but it seemed things were different here.
Josh frowned. “Sensei, that would taste weird. Only food that’s wrong would taste weird.”
Jade let out a quiet “oh” before waving her busy apprentice off to work, still unable to comprehend the vast culinary differences that stretched across time and space.