Gannet pie for Christmas

Gannet pie for Christmas

Gannets roost at Cape Kidnappers in 2005. Now protected, gannets were used by James Cook for his Christmas ’Goose pye’ in 1769.

Abel Tasman’s New Zealand Christmas 

The Christian origins of Christmas meant that before contact with Europeans, the celebration had no place in the calendar of Aotearoa. The first celebration of Christmas in New Zealand coincided with Abel Tasman’s voyage of discovery in 1642. Things did not get off to a good start.

On 19 December 1642 the Dutch East India Company ships Heemskerck and Zeehaen anchored in Mohua Golden Bay, home of Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri iwi. Clearly the locals felt threatened by these strange vessels and people. One of Tasman’s small boats was rammed by a waka as it was passing between the two ships. Four of Tasman’s men were killed. Several Ngāti Tūmatakōkiri may have been hit when the Dutch opened fire on them.

Tasman saw no reason to hang around. After naming the place Moordenaers Baij (Murderers’ Bay) he immediately set sail. His expedition reached the Manawatū coast of the North Island before crossing the entrance of Cook Strait and anchoring east of Stephens and D’Urville islands. Here the crew encountered what many Wellingtonians have become used to at Christmas time – poor weather. While sheltering from a storm, the Dutch enjoyed the first Christmas dinner in New Zealand – freshly killed pork from the ship’s menagerie washed down with extra rations of wine.

Cook’s ‘goose’ 

The next celebration of Christmas in New Zealand occurred during James Cook’s first voyage in 1769. The crew of the Endeavour marked the occasion by feasting on ‘Goose pye’ for their Christmas dinner while battling heavy seas off the top of the North Island. There were no geese in sight, so the crew had to improvise – using the magnificent gannet that had been shot in preparation for the feast by the ship’s noted botanist, Joseph Banks.

Apparently the Endeavour’s crew spent Boxing Day ‘nursing hangovers’, launching a tradition that now has a long history in New Zealand.

Yorkshire goose pie

As a Yorkshireman, Cook might well have insisted on this ‘Recipe for an Economical Goose Pie’, which was copied from a 1791 cookery book and dedicated to the Hon. Lady Wourton, whom the author served as housekeeper.

Take a large fat goose, split it down the back and take all the bone out; bone a turkey and two ducks the same way; season them with pepper and salt, with six woodcocks. Lay the goose down on a clean dish with the skin side down and lay the turkey into the goose with the skin down.

Have ready a large hare, cleaned well; cut in pieces and put in the oven with 1 lb of butter, ¼ oz mace, beat fine; the same of white pepper, and salt to taste, till the meat will leave the bones, and scum off the gravy; pick the meat clean off and beat it in a marble mortar very fine with the butter you took off, and lay it on the turkey.

Take 24 lbs of the finest flour, 6 lbs of butter, ½ lb of fresh rendered suet, make the paste thick and raise the pie oval; roll out a lump of paste and cut it in vine leaves or what form you will; rub the pie with yolks of eggs and put your ornaments on the wall, then turn your hare, turkey and goose upside down and lay them on your pie with the ducks at each end and the woodcocks at the sides. Make your lid pretty thick and put it on.

You may make flowers, or the shape of folds in the paste on the lid, and make a hole in the middle of the lid. The walls of the pie are to be 1½ ins. thicker than the lid. Rub it all over with the yolks of eggs and bind it round with three-fold paper and the same over the top. It will take 4 hours baking in a brown bread oven. When it comes out, melt 2 lbs of butter in the gravy that came from the hare and pour it through the ton-dish (funnel). Close it well up and let it be 8 or 10 days before you cut into it. If you send it any distance, close up the hole in the middle with cold butter to prevent the air from getting in.

Banks’s gannet pie probably failed to make the grade as a real goose pie. If this is the recipe for the economical version, it is hard to imagine the Michelin-starred model.

Do not attempt this at home

We at NZHistory do not advise attempting to copy the crew of the Endeavour by filling your Christmas pie with endangered or protected wildlife.

Community contributions

No comments have been posted about Gannet pie for Christmas

What do you know?