Previous | Next

In the broadest sense of the word, anything enclosed in pastry is a Pie: including fruit turnovers, empanadas, panzerotto, Cornish pasties, chicken pot pies, Melton Mowbray Pies, Shepherd's Pie and Cottage Pie.

Tarts are smaller versions of Pies, meant to be enough for one individual.

Early pies always had a top, but more modern pies, from about the early 1800s on, may or may not use a top crust. Sweet Pies are also somewhat of an innovation: Pies used to be all savoury for the most part.

In the old days, the Pie Crust wasn't eaten (see entry on Pie Crust.) Nowadays, a good Pie is defined by its crust, specifically, how flaky the crust is.

Though Pies are made throughout Europe, it was the British who clasped them to their hearts and loved them.

Double-Crust Pies

Pies with a top and bottom crust. In the days before refrigeration, many people preferred making them because they kept better than pies with no top crust. A double-crust fruit pie, if kept in a cooler part of the kitchen, would keep for three to four days.

History
Roman Pie dishes uncovered in Kent, England are round clay pots with deep sides. They also made free-form pies called "crostatas".

Pie tins (and bread tins, for that matter) didn't come along until the 1700s. Before then, pies were rectangular. You spread out your dough in a long, rectangular shape and pressed the sides up to make thick, sturdy edges to hold the filling in. Old recipes referred to this as making a "coffyn of paste". The concept of round pies appears to have originated with the colonists in America, and may well have started with someone deciding to try baking a pie in a cast-iron skillet.

In the Middle Ages, the crust wasn't meant to be eaten, it was just a container to cook in. You broke it open and ate the stuff inside and left the crust (just try getting away with that at your grandmother's table!) The crust would have been made from cheap flours such as rye. Its purpose was just to keep all the moisture in and stop what you were cooking from drying out. Later recipes had the crust made from wheat flour, which would have been more expensive, and butter, so by that point the crust would have been eaten.

Olive Cromwell banned mincemeat pies.

In the days before refrigeration, cream pies were made less frequently than fruit pies, because they spoilt very quickly.

Literature & Lore
Though there's nothing more American than apple pie, it's actually a British dish brought over by the colonists. Queen Elizabeth I was already eating it in England as apple tree cuttings were being brought over to America by the colonists.

It's a myth that Queen Elizabeth I made the first Cherry Pie. It's hard to know who cooks up these howlers, but Cherry Pies were being made long before that. Though Elizabeth probably enjoyed eating Cherry Pies as much as anybody, the chances that she spent any time in the kitchens at any of the 7 palaces she lived in from time to time are slim (the palaces are, by the way, Hampton Court, Greenwich, Nonsuch, Oatlands, Richmond, Whitehall and Windsor).


"In many families a feast would be incomplete without pie and they are served even on ordinary occasions at least two or three times per week. 'Handy as pie for breakfast' is an old saying we consider obsolete in application at present time, but in spite of the warnings of those who go out, even unto the byways, calling upon all those who still indulge their appetites contrary to the advanced rules of hygenic eating, we find a surprising number of our stout-minded and old-fashioned folk still cling to the notion that pie is a nice and handy relish for breakfast.

However, there are pies and pies. The English custom serves a meat or game pie, either hot or cold, for breakfast, and this is certainly more to be commended. Pie being among those dishes considered rather indigestible, even for the hearty and robust, should be given plenty of time during the most active hours of day for digestion: therefore, the morning or midday meal is the proper time for pie-eating. The immunity enjoyed by those, who, in certain rural sections, still observe the custom of serving pie for breakfast, may be accounted for by the active, outdoor life they lead which calls for a larger amount of "staying" food than the less active and less exposed workers could possibly accommodate with comfort of safety." -- Table and Kitchen Column. Trenton, New Jersey. The Trenton Times. Thursday, 23 January 1902. Page 6.

Language Notes
Pie was spelled "pye" in Middle English. "Coffyn" was the word for crust.

Also called:

Other entries for:

Pies & Tarts
Bakeapple Pie, Butter Tarts, Chess Pie, Cottage Pie, Devizes Pie, Fray Bentos Pies, Huntingdon Fidget Pie, Lemon Pie Filling, Manchester Pudding, Manchester Tart, Marlborough Pudding, Melton Mowbray Pork Pies, Mincemeat, Molasses Pie, Osgood Pie, Pasticcio, Pecan Tassies, Pork Pies, Poutine à la Mélasse, Poutine Carreautée, Pumpkin Pie, Raised Pies, Shepherd's Pie, Shoofly Pie, Stand Pies, Stokenchurch Pie, Taffy Tarts, Tarte à la mélasse, Tartiflette Tart, Tortini, Vinegar Pie, Zougnes

Other entries for:

Desserts
Aboukir Almonds, Angel Delight, Applesauce, Bananas Foster, Bangbelly, Belgian Waffles, Bhapa Doi, Bizcocho Borracho, Cakes, Cassata Gelata, Cassata, Cassatelle di Ricotta, Cherries Jubilee, Chiboust Cream, Compote, Cookies, Cream Tea, Crème d'amandes, Crème Plombières, Cumberland Rum Butter, Custard, Deep-Fried Mars Bars, Doughnuts, Dream Topping, Dream Whip, Dutch Crunch Topping, Eton Mess, French Toast, Fürst-Pückler-Eis, Halvah, Hattit Kit, Ice Cream Cones, Marshmallows, Meringue Italienne, Meringue Powder, Meringue, Mishti Doi, Moonpies, Nanaimo Bars, Nun's Tummies, Orange à la Norvegienne, Pastry Cream, Pokerounce, Poor Knights of Windsor, Poutine au Pain, Poutine à Trou, Puddings, Spumoni, Syllabub, Tavuk Gögsü, Timbale Brillat-Savarin, Tiramisù, Tortoni, Trifle, Vark, Waffles, Wagashi, Warabi Mochi, Zuccotto

Other entries for: Dishes

Dumplings, Salads, Savoury Dishes