Testing - Pork and Apple Pie

Food in England, Dorothy Hartley, p 119
Also consulted Food of England Web project

0 - The quantity of pork and apple really does not seem like enough to fill a whole pie shell! How thick, exactly should the potato crust be? It reads as if there is a very thin layer of apple and pork, and a honking huge layer of potato!
1 - Here goes! It's in the oven as I type. I forgot to press it down, in part because there was barely enough to fill a shallow pie plate. Hmmm. It may be that there should be more of a substantial potato crust and a thin layer of meat as I observed in my pre-making comment, above. As a cottage pie, I could imagine that it would be designed to stretch the protein so that it isn't really the main ingredient. The finished product was good and needs work: the potato layer was too thin and while baking, they started to curl up and burn at the apex; the contrast of sweet apple chunks (I used Granny Smith apples) to savory pork and onion was too pronounced. Next time, I will grate to apple, 'press it down firmly', and while creating a thicker layer of potato, also look into how to have them cook to be tender and golden instead of white and burnt.
2 - Parboiling and buttering the potatoes definitely works. I used 1.5 lbs of potatoes and the ones in the thicker portion didn't finish cooking, so I'll reduce it to 1 lb. It's an unexpectedly spicy and sweet dish. This time I made it without the bottom crust and it was good, but I'm curious to see how it'll be with it in. The observation that Ben and I made was the the layering didn't really work - there isn't enough matter for the layers to really show and in terms of flavour, it merely meant there were pockets of more apple, for example, which created an unevenness in the bites.

1 pie crust dough recipe
8 oz of cooked leftover pork of any description or fat bacon, or hock, or any spare meat, finely chopped
1 large cooking apples, rough chop grated
1 small onion, grated
2 sage leaves, minced (very little)
1 tsp salt
A couple of pinches of 1 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp pepper
1⁄4 1⁄2 to 2⁄3 cup meat stock
3-4 5-6 1 lb potatoes, sliced thin (pref. with a mandolin)
1-2 Tbsps melted butter

1. Line a deep pie dish with pie dough.
2. In a skillet, parboil the sliced potato until just under-done, about 4 minutes. Immediately throw in the butter along with a pinch of salt and pepper, and toss to cover the potatoes.
3. In a bowl, mix together the chopped meat, grated apple and grated onion along with the sage, salt, pepper and sugar. Lay in layers the ingredients in the following order: 1- the finely chopped pork, seasoned with salt; 2- the layer of apples, dusted with sugar; 3- a layer of shredded onion, dusted with pepper. (NOTE: I divided the pork into thirds and the apple and onion into halves which seemed to work fine).
4. Continue to layer, finishing with a layer of pork.
5. Press the filling down firmly, and then fill up with a very little the stock, barely enough to moisten it.
6. Cover with a thick potato crust.: after each layer of potato slices, brush with butter and lightly sprinkle with salt and pepper. Generously brush the top layer so that it browns nicely while baking.
7. Bake slowly at (325 or 350)F, browning nicely for one hour. (I have it in at 350F with an initial 45 minutes, which I'm pretty sure will have to be extended.)