Rook Pie Anyone?

A few years ago, a list of Britain’s ten best dishes was created and made much of. I have previously given this list, and intended to eventually find historical recipes for all the dishes for you. I don’t know how many I have found so far, but I am sure rook pie has not been one of them.
The rook is often confused with the crow, which is a carrion-eater. Humans tend to avoid eating carrion-eaters, I presume out of fear of inadvertently indirectly consuming an ancestor. Rooks, however, I am reliably informed, have a more acceptable diet to those who may choose to make a meal of the birds themselves.

I don’t know how popular rook pies have been in the past – most likely, I would guess, during times of necessity. They certainly seemed to engage some public interest during the meat-rationing times of World War II. There was a veritable flurry of correspondence on the topic in The Times during 1940.
Miss H. Brown, of 27. Peppard Road, Caversham, Reading, submitted the following recipe.

Rook Pie.
Use only the breast and legs of the bird, as the other parts are very bitter and unsuitable for eating. Fill the piedish with layers of breast and legs with hard-boiled eggs and a little fat bacon. Well season with pepper and salt. Cover with a good crust of pastry, and cook well in a moderate oven.

Over the ensuing months, other correspondents weighed in with hints about the making of rook pie. Some of the ideas were: the birds should be skinned, not plucked; best to steam the flesh before baking in the pie; pie is best eaten cold; best washed down with some good Bordeaux wine; pies are spoiled by having too little pepper and salt in them; the gravy should be liquid and the crust thick and flaky.


Quotation for the Day.

Hunting is now to most of us a game, whose relish seems based upon some mystic remembrance, in the blood, of ancient days when to hunter as well as hunted it was a matter of life and death.
Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage (1935)

An Amazing Pasty.

This day in 1573 was the birthday of Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, the Swiss-born physician to four kings – Henry IV of France, and James I, Charles I, and Charles II of England. Mayerne left France, where his religion (he was Protestant) and his style of medicine (he did not strictly adhere to the Galenic principles which underpinned medical practice of the time, but promoted ‘chemical remedies’ and empirical methods) put him at odds with his contemporaries. Mayerne is a subject of interest for this blog because he was also a gourmet - or perhaps a glutton, for he became so fat in his age that he could no longer call on his patients, they had to come to him.

Mayerne’s interest in chemical remedies and extended to an interest in cookery, and in 1658 he published a fascinating cookery book with the intriguing title of Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus, or, Excellent & Approved Receipts and Experiments in Cookery. We have featured one of the recipes from his book in a previous post – his famous London Pie. Today I want to give you another of his ‘pies’.

This recipe for a Pasty Royal is long, but it is a wonderful read: a pasty based on a whole leg of mutton, but which includes only one clove of garlic that is removed at the end of cooking; a pasty that takes twenty four hours to cook, and is removed from the oven a number of times during that period, so that various additions can be made to it; a pasty that – in the days well before refrigeration – the author assures can be reheated multiple times, should it not be eaten all at one meal (I don’t recommend you try this yourself!)

The Pasty Royal.

Take a legg of Mutton, strip the skin off from it, take out the bones nd the sinnues, after which beat the flesh to mortifie it and then cause it to be well chopt, and as you chop it, you must season it with salt spices.

Now your meat being thus well chopped, you must make up your paste of Rye-crust, and give it at least two inches in thickness proportionably according to the bignesse of your pasty, and raise the paste therof high enough.

You must line the bottomand sides thereof with fat Bacon in slices, and in the bottome you must also place a good handful of Ox suet which is small minced and thereunto add your meat after it shall have been well minced; and in case Chestnuts be in season, you may add thereunto a reasonable proportion after they shal have been first half roasted.

When your meat shall be thus in your pastie you must add thereunto one handful of Beef suet well minced, and about half a pound of Beef marrow cut into small pieces about the bigness of a walnut; All which composition you must cover or overspred with some slices of fat Bacon.

Finally, you shall cover this Pasty with Rye-crust at least a fingers breadth thick, and you must make a hole in the said lidd.

Such a like Pasty as this must be at least twenty or four and twenty hours in the oven, which said oven you must all the while keep shut, to the end that it may yield a sufficient heat whereby the said Pasty must be thorowly baked, which said pasty you must oftentimes take out of the said Oven to supply it with broth or gravie as often as shall be wanting.

To which purpose, take the bones and the skin and sinews which ye have cut away from the said legg of Mutton, bruise them indifferently, and afterwards boyl them together with the said skin and sinews for the space of one houre and a half in water without salt, and when as the said liquour and broath shall be concocted in such a manner as that there shall be but a pint left, you shall make use of it in the following manner, viz.

After your Royal-Pasty shall have been about the space of four hours in the Oven, you must draw it, and you must poure thereinto with a funnel about the quantity of a quarter of a pint of the said liquor or broath being well heated, after which you shall again put your pasty in the Oven, and within two or three houres you shall draw it and you shall see whether or no it doth want any sauce or liquor, in case whereof you shall add more sauce unto it: and in this manner you shall draw your said pasty at several times until it hath continued in the Oven for the space of fifteen or sixteen houres; when as you shall again draw it forth of the Oven and shall take of its lidd, for to embellish your pasty with the yolks of egs hard boyled cut in quarters; you may also add thereunto Mucerons, the gills and combs of Cocks and other like sweet breads; you may also thereunto add a small clove of Garlick and a drop or two of vinegar, for to make the sauce more pleasing and tart: observe also that your Lambstones and sweet-breads must be seasoned with your sweet spices.

After which you must return the said pasty into the Oven again, and you shall let it remain there till it be thoroughly baked at least three hours afterwards and you must have a care to maintain the fire in the said Oven, in such a manner that there may be sufficient heat to bake the said pasty without burning it.

When the like pasty is thoroughly baked, you shall take out the clove of Garlick which you did put into it before you doe serve it up to the Table, and after that you shall fasten on the lidd of your pasty again, so that your pasty may be brought whole to the Table: and if it be so that the said pye be not eaten up at one meal, you may cause it to be heated again in the Oven, until such time as it is quite expended.

Quotation for the Day.

"We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie."
David Mamet,  Boston Marriage.

Bacon Week: Part the Second.

Yesterday we considered bacon and eggs as they were described and cooked in the early seventeenth century – which is pretty well the same way as they are cooked today. Sadly, one thing that has not persisted since early times is the enormous pie. Nowadays we have shaped metal containers to hold the food we wish to bake in an oven, but before the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution, the only baking ‘dish’ for a large joint of meat was a thick pastry shell or ‘coffin.’

The source for yesterday’s recipe, The English Houswife, by Gervase Markham, published in 1615, also gives a wonderful description of how a whole gammon (leg) of ham could be baked at that time. Notice that the ‘pie’ is shaped to make it look like a pig, the ‘head’ being modelled separately out of pastry and attached to the ‘body’ – a nice take on the ‘Sham Pig’ idea of a few days ago.

A Gammon of Bacon Pie.
Take a Gammon of Bacon, and onely wash it clean, and then boyl it on a soft gentle fire, till it be boyl’d as tender as is possible, ever and anon fleeting [skimming]it clean, that by all means it may boyl white: then take off the sward [skin], and farce it very well with all manner of sweet and pleasant farcing herbs: then strew store of Pepper over it, and prick it thick with Cloves: then lay it into a coffin made of the same proportion, and lay good store of Butter round about it, and upon it, and strew Pepper on the Butter, that as it melts, the Pepper may fall upon the Bacon: then cover it, and make the proportion of a Pigs Head in paste upon it, then bake it as you bake red Deer, or things of the like nature, only the Paste would be of Wheat-meal

William Salmon’s The Family Dictionary, or Household Companion (1695) describes how to dress ‘in the neatest way’, a Gammon of Bacon. I love this book: the next entry in this very useful general household manual is ‘Gangreen’.

Gammon of Bacon.
To dress this the neatest way, having water’d it [soaked it to remove the excess salt], scrubb’d it with a Brush, and scraped the Rind, and dry’d it again with a Cloth, put it into a Kettle wherein it may have sufficient room: then take Sage, Marjoram, Fenel, Sprigs of Bays and Rosemary, and boil it till it is enough; then split the Skin, and so curiously carve it, and stick the places so stript with Cloves; strew some Pepper on it, and serve it up with Mustard, Pepper, Vinegar, and the Herbs small minced, cut up in fine slices of what length you please, but of very indifferent thickness.


Quotation for the Day.

He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions.
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.

Resurrection Pie.

In 1863 the Epidemiological Society of London conducted an inquiry into the state of health of young women employed in the large dressmaking and millinery houses of the West End of that city. Unfortunately the inquiry could not be completed because “the time which could be devoted to it proved to be too short for its successful prosecution.” The contributing reasons for the difficulty in completing the study are in themselves very illuminating. The young women “lived in” at the great houses, and worked punishing hours, especially during “the season”, so could only be examined“after work hours or during a short relaxation from business late in the evening and then for a brief time only.” Another factor was that “the examined were very reticent” – a similar issue to that which had “to a great extent foiled the official investigations of the First Children's Employment Commission and of the Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1853 on this subject.

The reason for the reticence on the part of the employees was obvious. The young women were concerned “lest they should in some way or other compromise themselves with their employers … some declined because they held that it would not be right to give information concerning the state of the employed and internal economy of the houses of business in which they were living … ”. Some employees “freely avowed that the existing state of things in millinery and dressmaking so far as the employed were concerned was as a rule most unsatisfactory, but they maintained that it would not be honourable whilst eating the bread and living under the roof of an employer to make any statement which might be prejudicial to him whatever just source of complaint there might be.”

The working day usually started at 8.30 or 9, and a 12 hour day was usual - but during the peak season, the women often worked until the early hours of the morning. The arrangements for food and meals in four “first-class” houses (of dressmaking an millinery” were included in the report. This is the report from house number IV.

"Breakfast at 7 am summer: 8 am winter: tea bread and butter. Dinner from 1 to 2 pm Chiefly beef and mutton, sometimes roast, sometimes boiled beef, steak pies, cabbage pies, kidney pies. Monday “resurrection pie” and potatoes. Tuesday hot joint, but not regularly. Wednesday, cold joint. Thursday, boiled salt beef. Friday, cold boiled beef Saturday, beef steak pudding, Yorkshire pudding with roast joint. Fruit puddings or pies very rarely. Rarely any vegetable but potatoes.Sameness of meat and vegetables repulsive. Cooking very inferior. Tea - hour very irregular - from 5 to 7 pm: tea, bread and butter. Supper 10 pm at the earliest: bread and cheese sometimes butter.
Occasionally an egg in place of cheese or butter. No occasional refreshment however late work may be protracted. A very limited quantity of beer allowed. The meals are not nicely served The food is placed on the table in a disorderly manner and the table linen and furniture are far from clean. The drinking vessels are pot mugs not glasses. The quantity of food is not stinted and the quality is very fair if it were properly prepared."

All I can say is - Thank goodness for modern labour laws!

It is the “resurrection pie” that captures my imagination today. It refers to a pie made from the previous weeks leftovers and scraps (a concept we came across in a previous post), often served in boarding schools and similar institutions. I have seen one reference to a similar concept being called “Gunpowder Pie”, on account of the large amount of pepper included to disguise the taste of the elderly ingredients. There is no “recipe” of course, by definition – a resurrection pie being a mere assembly of the detritus of the pantry, most usually, it seems, mixed with a lot of potato. Instead then, I give you a pie of potatoes only – with pepper (feel free to make it gunpowder-hot). The recipe is from the inimitable Dr William Kitchener’s Cook’s Oracle (1836).

Potato Pie.
Peel and slice your Potatoes very thin into a pie dish; between each layer of Potatoes put a little chopped onion (three quarters of an ounce of onion is sufficient for a pound of Potatoes); between each layer sprinkle a little pepper and salt; put in a little water and cut about two ounces of fresh butter into little bits and lay them on the top; cover it close with puff paste. It will take about an hour and a half to bake it.
N.B. The Yolks of four Eggs (boiled hard) may be added; and when baked a table spoonful of good Mushroom Catchup poured in through a funnel.
Obs. - Cauliflowers divided into mouthsful and Button Onions seasoned with Curry Powder &c make a favourite Vegetable Pie


Quotation for the Day.

If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Queensland (Culinary) History Week.

The state of Queensland is this year celebrating 150 years of independence from New South Wales. The actual day is December 10, but there are celebrations of various sorts going on all year, and today is the start of something called “History Week”. It has crossed my mind that the organisers have probably not paid much attention to Queensland’s culinary history (and I don’t just mean the damned Lamington.)

I have decided to do my bit this week, and promote one of Queensland’s humble glories – the pumpkin. We grow good pumpkins here. We don’t have to try, they sabotage compost heaps and garden beds and take over the garden with great facility if the vines are not beaten into submission as soon as they appear. If you have ever had this happen to you, you might have found that, quite literally, you cannot give them away. I have, more than once, (when I lived in the country) wondered what on earth I had done wrong, to be gifted with yet another enormous Queensland Blue.

So, today, I am going to assist you with any pumpkin glut that might come your way.The first thought, in Queensland, would be pumpkin scones. They are somewhat of a Queensland icon, so I hesitate to confess that in almost four years of this blog that I have not given you a recipe for pumpkin scones. Nor will I today, for I am still recovering from some of the truly shocking scone ideas I found for a previous post. We have had pumpkin fruit cake before too, so no news there.

How about the pumpkin pie? It is indelibly associated with that other Big Country across the water. – but I am here to tell you that it is well known in Queensland too (but we don’t use canned pumpkin. Canned pumpkin?) Pumpkin Pie was one of the topics in last year’s Thanksgiving Pie Week, but perhaps there is more than one post’s worth of substance in Pumpkin Pie?

The Australasian Cookery Book (circa 1915) thinks so. It has seven recipes for Pumpkin Pie, plus Pumpkin and Apple Pie, Pumpkin and Passionfruit Pie, Pumpkin and Pineapple Pie, and Pumpkin Meringue Pie (which includes chopped preserved ginger – another of Queensland’s famous products). If there is still pumpkin left, there is Pumpkin and Apricot Jam, Pumpkin and Pineapple Jam (did I mention that we grow a lot of pineapples here too?), and Pumpkin and Lemon Jam. And there is more. There are instructions (as if you’d need them!) for boiled mashed pumpkin and baked pumpkin, as well as Pumpkin Soup, Stuffed Pumpkin, and two versions of Pumpkin Fritters.

Most surprisingly there are also recipes for Pumpkin Flowers (stuffed with rice and herbs) and Pumpkin Tops (young shoots). All this last recipe lacks is the Hollandaise sauce to make it a nice stand-in for Eggs Florentine. Queensland chefs take note – a local spin on this breakfast classic is just a pumpkin patch away.

Pumpkin Tops.
Take a good quantity of the young shoots of the pumpkin vine, wash well in salted water. Have ready a saucepan full of quickly boiling water, add a small pinch of soda, put in the pumpkin tops, and boil until quite tender. Strain through a colander, and press with the back of a saucer to get out all the moisture. Chop finely and return to the pan with 1 oz. of butter, salt and pepper to taste. Toss till very hot. Have ready some nicely-toasted bread, butter thickly, and pile the pumpkin tops neatly on top. Place a poached egg on each, and serve.


Quotation for the Day.

Produce great pumpkins, the pies will follow later.
Anon.

Thanksgiving Pie No. 3

It is the turn of cranberry pie today, in our Thanksgiving series. The cranberry is of course a major crop in the USA, and like the pumpkin, was used to advantage by the Native American Indians who shared their knowledge with the hungry, struggling early settlers, thereby assuring its place at the heart of Thanksgiving.

According to a gardeners’s manual of 1839, one cranberry plant requires two and a half square feet of land and will produce three and a half bushels of berries which will supply one hundred and forty pies. Even if modern horticultural methods have not increased the yield, that is an extraordinarily generous pie plant.

Living as I do in the nether part of the world, where fresh cranberries are as common as hen’s teeth and almost as expensive as fresh caviar, I am thoroughly entitled to be curious about cranberry pie. Most recipes give a cup for cup amount of sugar to berries. This is a jam proportion, is it not?  Is the filling of the finished pie/tart jammy (or it that jelly-y?)  I know that one year I will make it over the big water in time for Thanksgiving, and perhaps one of you will make me the real deal. I look forward to it.

In the meanwhile, only a gratuitious satisfaction of my curiosity is possible. It appears that cookbook writers over the years disagree as to whether the quintessential cranberry pie should be spiced or not, and the berries pre-cooked or not. There does seem to be consensus that cranberry pies are topless. In many parts of the world, a topless pie is a tart … but let me not start that debate again …

The extraordinarily versatile and prolific Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) who must be considered an expert, comes out clearly in favour of topless cranberry pies. In her famous book The American Frugal Housewife (1841) says of them:

“Cranberry pies need very little spice. A little nutmeg, or cinnamon, improves them. They need a great deal of sweetening. It is well to stew the sweetening with them ; at least a part of it. It is easy to add, if you find them too sour for your taste. When cranberries are strained, and added to about their own weight in sugar, they make very delicious tarts. No upper crust.”

I have chosen a recipe for you today from an Iowa newspaper, the Waterloo Courier, of Nov 24, 1880.

Cranberry Pie.

There are various ways to make a cranberry pie; some make it open like a custard or pumpkin pie. This is good, but not so good as to cover like an apple pie. Do not stew the berries, as some do before baking, but slit each berry with a knife. This will preserve the freshness of the fruit, which is quite an important thing. A cupful of berries aud an equal quantity of white sugar will make a medium-sized pie. .Those who like a sweet pie should have more sugar, also more berries if desired. 
Bake as usual. A little flour sifted over the fruit gives it a thicker consistence.
One thing should not be forgotten, add a small teacupful of water.

Do you, Oh Fresh Cranberry Pie Makers, really slit each and every berry individually before en-pastrying them? A great labour of love, that.

The cranberry is also, as I understand it, indispensible in the form of sauce for the turkey at Thanksgiving – no doubt an adaptation of the ancient indispensible currant sauce for various meats from the English tradition. I can buy it in a jar here in Oz, but it looks like breakfast jam. Maybe I will mortgage the house and buy some fresh berries to make it this year for our Christmas turkey. Please send me your best recipe for cranberry sauce from scratch.

Quotation for the Day …

It has been an unchallengeable American doctrine that cranberry sauce, a pink goo with overtones of sugared tomatoes, is a delectable necessity of the Thanksgiving board and that turkey is uneatable without it.

Alistair Cooke.

Thanksgiving Pie No.2

Pecan pie like great-great-grandmother used to make was the request of “Jay” who is intrigued as to how she did it without corn syrup.

The pecan is a native of North America, and was a prized food of the Native American tribes. It was being cultivated in Mexico by Spanish settlers at least half a century before the first known planting in the future USA – in Long Island in 1772. Production of the nut on a significant commercial scale did not develop until made possible by horticultural developments in the 1880’s. The centres for this new industry were Louisiana and Texas - which perhaps explains one reader’s answer to the omission made by Ms Paddleford - that the Thanksgiving pies in the South are “pumpkin and pecan.”

This relatively late commercialisation of the nut probably explains why there is no pecan pie recipe in the considerable resources of the Feeding  America: Historic Cook Book Project . Until the 1880’s, the only source of the nut for the pie-cook was the wild tree or the occasional garden specimen. The first mention of pecan pie in the Oxford English Dictionary is quoted from Harper’s Bazaar in 1886 – “Pecan pie... The pecans must be very carefully hulled, and the meat thoroughly freed from any bark or husk … ”. There is apparently a recipe in a New Orleans cookbook of 1900 but I know not what it is.

A very short spell of research turned up the inclusion of pecans in a ‘cream’ in the Lady’s Receipt Book of 1847, and in a cake in La Cuisine Creole in 1885. No pie. A snippet in a Galveston Newspaper of July 1910 seems to suggest that pecan pie was a relatively new idea then:

“Never ate a piece of pecan pie? Lots of us are in the same fix, but those familiar with the pecan say thare is nothing more delicious than a pecan pie, which is a custard pie in which are blended the ground kernels of pecans.”

The first actual recipe I have turned up so far (until I can find the one in Harper’s Bazaar), is in an Ohio newspaper (The Piqua Daily Call) of May 3, 1915.

Texas Pecan Pie:

Cook together one cupful of sweet milk, one cupful of sugar, three well-beaten eggs, one tablespoonful of flour and one cupful of finely chopped pecan meats. Line a pie tin with rich crust, fill with the mixture, and bake until done. Whip the whites of two eggs with two tablespoonfuls of sugar until stiff, spread over the top of the pie and brown slightly in the oven, sprinkling a few chopped nuts over the top.

So, there you have it Jay – the early, pre-corn syrup pecan pie was custardy rather than caramelly. 

Quotation for the Day …

What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
Erma Bombeck

Thanksgiving Pie No. 1

The famous food-writer Clementine Paddleford (1898-1967) said, of Thanksgiving pies ‘Tell me where your grandmother came from and I can tell you how many kinds of pie you serve for Thanksgiving.’ She summarised it thus:

If your grandmother was from the Midwest, there would be mince and pumpkin, if from New England, mince, pumpkin, and cranberry, if from Boston, mince, pumpkin, cranberry and apple). She did not explain grandmothers from the West or South, but I am sure there are grandmothers in those states, and that Thanksgiving is celebrated there …

In Clemetine’s honour, and in honour of my many American cyber-friends, and because a couple of you have asked for stories on them, I am going to dedicate the week to Thanksgiving Pies. Clementine only lists four varieties, but I know there are more. ‘Jay’ has asked about pecan pie like his great great grandmother used to make – you will have to be patient until tomorrow, Jay!  Today, because she got in first with her request, the story is at the request of Laura, and it is on pumpkin pie.

First, the pumpkin itself. The pumpkin belongs to the family Cucurbitacae, which includes gourds, squashes, pumpkins, marrows, melons, and cucumbers. They are amongst the earliest cultivated plants in the world. The genus which includes the pumpkin and squash (Cucurbita) originated in the New World, and pumpkins were cultivated in Mexico (probably for the seeds) about 6,000 years ago. When the conquistadores arrived, they likened the big round fruit (the pumpkin, botanically speaking is a fruit) to melons (perhaps a general word for edible gourds, which were known in Europe.) Somewhere along the way for reasons that are unclear, these melons became pompones or pompion – and then pumpkin.  In 1525 in the Grete Herball of Peter Trevis, there is a reference to ‘melons that we call pompous [pompons]' , so it appears that they were being grown in England by that time.

Certainly, the pumpkin was a vital crop for the Indians of North America, who were generous with their plant knowledge to the early settlers. It is said that the pumpkin saved those early settlers from starvation on more than one occasion, which is perhaps why it is engraved so deeply on the national consciousness, particularly at Thanksgiving - particularly in the form of pie.

Recipes are never invented of course, they are developed from a recipe ancestor. There is a Tart of Pompeons in the sixteenth century Italian text Epulario, and I have given the recipe for this in a previous post. Of course, the linguistic confusion between gourds, squash and pumpkins means that it is not always certain which is being referenced in early texts. The Tart of Pompeons is a strange (to us today) sort of dish – not quite custard, not quite cheesecake, and almost mincemeat pie. A similar concept of a starchy ‘vegetable’ (or fruit, in the case of the pumpkin) forming the base for a sweet dish has many incarnations, and I have previously given you a recipe for Carrot Pudding from 1715 which could easily be used for a pumpkin pie filling if the main ingredient were substituted.

Just to show you that appreciation of the pumpkin pie is not confined to the USA, I give you a recipe from a Melbourne newspaper, The Argus, dated September 10, 1919.  Here in Queensland we grow a fine, large, sweet, dry variety of pumpkin called the Queensland Blue, which is just right for the purpose - see the image above.

Pumpkin Pie

Take a pint of well-cooked pumpkin from which as much moisture as possible has been pressed.  Mix with it two well-beaten eggs, a cupful of sugar, a teaspoonful of cinnamon, a half-teaspoonful ginger, a little grated nutmeg, and the grated yellow rind of 1 small lemon. Line the piedish with shortcrust pastry, making the edges ornamental. Fill up with the pumpkin mixture and bake for half an hour or a little longer in a quick oven. Pumpkin pie should not be covered with pastry.

Quotation for the Day …

Vegetables are a must on a diet.  I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.  Jim Davis (‘Garfield’ creator)

The Blurb on the Pie Book!

It is really going to happen - the pie book is really going to happen. The proof is in Reaktion Books' catalogue.
It is going to happen in April.
I am very excited.
Click on the image to read the blurb!

Every good book has some good out-takes, and every follower of this blog likes a historic recipe, so here are the instructions for a nice Lark Pie for you, from that intriguing Frenchman, the Baron Brisse.

Lark Pie.

Pluck, singe, and flatten the backs of two or three dozen larks, draw them, throw away the gizzards, and pound the trail [the intestines] in a mortar with scraped bacon and mixed herbs; fill the larks with this, and wrap each one in a slice of bacon. Line a plain mould with paste, fill it with the larks, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, spread a thick layer of butter over them, add two or three laurel leaves, and a pinch of mixed spice; cover with paste, and bake for two hours and a half. Turn out of the mould, and serve cold.
From The 366 Menus and 1200 Recipes of the Baron Brisse (1868)

Gobstoppers, Humbugs, and Bull’s Eyes.

More random facts on boiled sweeties today.

A gob is something you gab (and eat) with, and it must be an old word because the OED says it is ‘of obscure origin’, possible Gaelic. It is not too difficult then to understand what a gob-stopper is. What surprised me when I went looking is that it is a relatively recent word. The first OED reference is from Walter de la Mare, which pleases me no end – I do like it when the first reference is a literary one. In Come Hither (1928), Walter says ‘Gob-stoppers and toffee, are these not ‘good’ names for goodies?’ They are indeed Walter.

Humbug is an interesting word. The OED is really puzzled by it. It says ‘humbug’ is ‘a slang or cant word which came into vogue c1750.’ It goes on to say:

‘Many guesses at the possible derivation of humbug have been made; but as with other and more recent words of similar introduction, the facts as to its origin appear to have been lost, even before the word became common enough to excite attention. Cf. the following:
1751 (Jan.) Student II. 41 There is a word very much in vogue with the people of taste and fashion, which though it has not even the ‘penumbra’ of a meaning, yet makes up the sum total of the wit, sense and judgement of the aforesaid people of taste and fashion!..I will venture to affirm that this Humbug is neither an English word, nor a derivative from any other language. It is indeed a blackguard sound, made use of by most people of distinction! It is a fine, make-weight in conversation, and some great men deceive themselves so egregiously as to think they mean something by it!

This blackguard of a word became the name of a sweetmeat in the early nineteenth century – at least according to the OED again. It is mentioned as being ‘in common use in Gloucestershire’ in 1825. I’ll bet there are earlier references somewhere.

Bulls’ Eyes. Like gob-stopper, this one is self-explanatory. First mention again, about 1825. Perhaps there was a great growth in the boiled sweet industry in the first couple of decades of the nineteenth century? I am away from many of my resources at present, so am asking more questions that I am attempting to answer, which is not a bad thing. If any of you have any ideas, do please let us all know.

No recipes for todays sweets – they are variations on the same theme of yesterday; boil sugar and add flavouring and form into shapes. Instead, this one for pie. Pie is good.

Butterscotch Pie.
Line a pie tin with plain pastry [and presumably ‘bake blind’] then place in a saucepan
3 tablespoons of butter
1 cup of brown sugar.
Heat slowly and cook for three minutes. Then place one and one-half cups of cold milk in a bowl and add four level tablespoons of cornstarch to the milk. Stir to dissolve the starch and add to the cooked sugar and stir constanty to thoroughly blend. Bring to a boil and cook for three minutes. Cool and add one well-beaten egg. Then pour into the prepared pie plate. Care must be taken to not let the sugar caramel.
Mrs. Wilson’s Cook Book. 1920

Dinner “Out West”

I have something for you just for fun today, while your system recovers from yesterday’s idea of Tomato Marshmallow. It is from a fascinating publication called Yankee Notions in 1854 – a worthy read which appears have modelled itself on the well-known English Punch magazine.

It is for those of you who love pig, or love to hate pig. It is, I am sure, entirely tongue-in-cheek, and there is, I am sure, some intended regional slur, but it is, I am certain, very amusing. And in any case, there are historic precedents for one-meat meals: Horsemeat dinners in London and Paris in the 1860’s, and a famous (if difficult to track down and authenticate) ‘all beef’ dinner said to have been given by Cardinal Richelieu.

The Bill of Fare.

A party of our friends stopped one day, a year or two ago, at ‘Barkis’ Hotel’, somewhere “out west” and asked him to get them some dinner. “Barkis was willing” and spread before them the following bill of fare; various, “that the tastes of desultory man, studious of change, and pleased with novelty, might be indulged.”

BARKIS’ HOTEL – BILL OF FARE
Tuesday, May 15, 1851.

ROASTED.
Pig, Pork, Ham, Hog
BOILED.
Ham, Eggs, Ham and Eggs, Hams,
BAKED.
Beans, Pork and Beans, Bread, Biscuit.
COLD DISHES.
Boiled - Ham, Roast - Swine.
Boiled - Pork, Roast -Pig
Boiled - Pig, Roast - Pork
Boiled - Swine, Roast - Ham
Cooked - Animals, Baked – Pig
Cooked - Injun, Baked - Ham
Cooked - Pies, Baked - Pork
Cooked - Cake, Baked - Swine
Cooked - Biscuit, Baked - Hog
Cooked - Beans, Baked - Beans
PASTRY, ETC.
Pie - Mince, Cake - Fruit
Pie - Berry, Cake - Sponge
Pie - Apple, Cake - Cymbals
Apples and Cheese.
LIQUORS
Jamaica Rum, Pale Brandy
Monongaheel, Dark do.
McGuckin, Gin Whiskey Bill.

One of our friends tells us that he ate so heartily of some of the earlier dishes, that he had little appetite for the cold “courses!”

***

I had to take some liberties with the formatting of the 'original' menu, for those of you who are sticklers for such things - I blame Blogger. Or me.

Now, for our recipe for the day, I give you pork and dessert in one, from The Great Western Cook Book, or Table Receipts, Adapted to Western Housewifery. circa 1851.

Pork Apple Pie.
Make your crust in the usual way; spread it over a large, deep plate; cut some slices of fat pork, very thin, also some slices of apples; place a layer of apples, and then of pork, with a very little allspice, and pepper, and sugar between--three or four layers of each--with crust over the top. Bake one hour.

Quotation for the Day …

Any Part of the Piggy

Any part of the piggy
Is quite all right with me
Ham from Westphalia, ham from Parma
Ham as lean as the Dalai Lama
Ham from Virginia, ham from York,
Trotters Sausages, hot roast pork.
Crackling crisp for my teeth to grind on
Bacon with or without the rind on
Though humanitarian
I'm not a vegetarian.
I'm neither crank nor prude nor prig
And though it may sound infra dig
Any part of the darling pig
Is perfectly fine with me.
Noel Coward.

Humble Pie.

July 8 …

Samuel Pepys, bless him, alerted me out of my topic-neglect with his diary entry for this day in 1663. His wife was away in the country, but he managed not to starve.

“And then at noon home to dinner alone, upon a good dish of eeles given me by Michell the Bewpers-man. … I stepped to Sir W. Batten and there stayed and talked with him, my Lady being in the country, and sent for some lobsters; and Mrs. Turner came in and did bring us an Umble-pie hot out of her oven, extraordinarily good, and afterward some spirits of her making (in which she has great judgement), very good, and so home, merry with this nights refreshment.”

I can hardly believe that I have not given you a story about ‘umble pie’ in almost three years of blogging – and me about to give birth to a pie book sometime almost soon. I hope. A pie book has a gestation period of about fifty images, did you know that? The writing was the easy bit. No need to understand pixels, dpi’s, KB’s, jpegs, or how to get rid of red-eye. A piece of chalk and a blank wall will suffice, for words. But I digress.

‘Umbles’ or nombles, or humbles are ‘the inwards of a deer or other beast’ – in other words, the offal from your venison. A most prized part of the beast in Samuel’s day, not one to be shuddered at briefly before being slipped to the hounds or made invisible in sausages. A part traditionally the perquisite of the gamekeeper, but occasionally snaffled by the ‘better class of folk’ for their own enjoyment in ‘umble pie’. An interesting dish, Umble Pie. Quite paradoxical, really. Inferior enough to give us the ‘humble pie’ we eat symbolically when we are mildly humiliated, yet capable of being ‘extraordinarily good’ - good enough to give all fresh and hot from the oven, to your visitors. Desirable enough that if you didn’t have any umbles handy, a recipe book of 1617 could tell you how to fake the recipe, so that no-one could tell.

To make an Umble-pye, or for want of Umbles, to doe it with a Lambes head and Purtenance.
Boyle your meate reasonable tender, take the flesh from the bone, and mince it small with Beefe-suet and Sparrow, with the Liver, Lights, and Heart, a few sweet Hearbes and Currans. Season it with Pepper, Salt, and Nutmeg: bake it in a Coffin raised like an Umble pye, and it will eate so like unto Umbles, as that you shall hardly by taste discerne it from right Umbles.
[A New Booke of Cookerie; John Murrell, 1617]

Lamb’s Purtenance? The ‘innards or entrails of an animal, esp. as used for food’. Sheep Umbles, in other words.

Tomorrow’ Story …

Entertaining the Queen.

Quotation for the Day …

I think that I should like to sing of pies

Walter Elliot

From Russia, with recipes.

May 27 ...

Cookery is a constantly evolving and adapting art and science, and it can be difficult if not impossible to determine the roots of many dishes – even the fiercely national ones. Most dishes are like mongrel dogs, with a little bit of a lot of influence. Often the Anglicised names of dishes are a clue. There must be twenty different spellings of ‘pilau’ in old English cookbooks, for example. Sometimes a recipe would simply be designated ‘in the Spanish style’, or ‘the French way’, or ‘Italian fashion’. By the nineteenth century, a few cookbooks started to appear that proudly demonstrated and promoted ‘foreign’ food.

A ‘coulibiac’ is, according to the OED ‘A Russian pie of fish or meat, cabbage, etc.’ The cabbage appears again, I see – which is ironic as this post arose out of my need to balance Pushkin’s ‘national monotonous diet’ idea.

Here are a couple of ‘Russian pies’ à la English-language cookbooks - one simply named, the other accurately enough. Both without cabbage.

Russian Fish-Roll.
Chop some cooked trout and white fish, and mix with ½ cup of boiled rice. Season with salt, pepper and all kinds of herbs minced fine. Then make a rich pie-paste and roll out very thin. Fill with the mixture and make into a roll. Sprinkle with bits of butter and let bake until brown. Serve hot with wine-sauce.
[365 Foreign dishes, a foreign dish for every day in the year. 1908]

Coulibac. (Russia.)
Make a paste as for baba pudding or Savarin, and roll it very thin. Cut into a large square, fill it with a forcemeat of veal, rice, eggs, herbs, butter, stock, and mushrooms, and roll it up like jelly cake. Dust the top with crumbs, and bake it 1 hour. Serve with hot wine sauce, in slices.
[With A Saucepan Over The Sea; Quaint And Delicious Recipes From The Kitchens Of Foreign Countries, Adelaide Keen. Boston, Little, Brown And Company, 1902.]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Equal to an Egg.

Quotation for the Day …

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good. Alice May Brock.

Chicken pie without the chicken.

April 14 ...

The Editor of The Cultivator – the journal of the New York Agricultural Society –made a ‘polite invitation’ to Farmers’ wives and daughters to furnish recipes for future publication in the issue of January 1849.

The response must have been underwhelming, for in March, the Editor’s wife herself supplied a few recipes. This one is intriguing:

Mock Chicken Pie.
Boil common potatoes – season highly with salt and pepper; some prefer a little thyme or summer-savory. Pour milk over them, and stir till of a moderate paste; fill a pie dish with crust above and below the contents. Strew pieces of pork through it. Bake in an oven, and serve hot. A single crust, filled and doubled, is called tarn-overs.

My puzzle is this: why not call it Pork and Potato Pie?

I am moderately intrigued by the whole, old concept of Mock Food. There seem to be several reasons for counterfeiting food, but I am not sure which one applies here. The commonest reason is probably one of necessity – when a substitute must be found for either a more expensive or unavailable ingredient. Such counterfeit foods are common in times of scarcity: wartime ersatz coffee for example. Or carob for real chocolate, when there is a scarcity of common sense. This explanation surely does not apply in the above recipe? Down on the farm, when a pie is called for, a single family-size post-menopausal hen would be more easily available to substitute for a big porker than the reverse, wouldn’t it?

Deception is another reason. The family want chicken pie, but there is still some leftover roast from Sunday which must be used up? They say they hate pork but it was cheap this week at the market?

The other issue of importance is : was this pie intended to be served up as if it was chicken, with the truth not told?

The third reason for making mock food is for fun: meatloaf with slivered almonds stuck all over it and called hedgehog, for example. But there is nothing remotely hilarious about the mock-chicken pie, is there? Or am I am missing something?

It seems that this topic of mock food is worthy of pursuing this week, as we search for enlightenment. Your input is humbly requested.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Mock Food No. 2

Quotation for the Day …

We didn't starve, but we didn't eat chicken unless we were sick, or the chicken was. Bernard Malamud (1914-86)

Pi(e) No. 5

March 14 ...

Pi day dawns. In gratitude to the mathematicians of the world who do mathematics ungrudgingly, leaving me free of the worry of it, I give a thanksgiving pie. A thanksgiving pumpkin pie of course, even though I am from the wrong continent(s) entirely for such a tradition. Or am I?

Once upon a time there was ‘a kynde of Melones’ called ‘pompones’ or ‘pompion’. Certainly the pompion was known in England by 1526, when it was described this way in the Grete Herball of Peter Treveris. The term may have been used fairly loosely for a number of edible gourds, but let us stay in the spirit of the day and consider a pompion was close enough to what we would call a pumpkin today (or maybe a squash). There are many recipes for pompion pie in English cookbooks, and when the early seventeenth century English went to the new colony across the Atlantic, they took their cookbooks with them. The pompion/pumpkin pie thrived in its new home so well - as it simultaneously slipped into an elegant decline in its ‘old’ - that it all but forgot its heritage.

Its heritage was not pure Anglo of course (but then the English are a mongrel race if ever we were one) – it seems it had an Italian parent. An ancestor of the pumpkin pie appears in a book published in Venice in the sixteenth century – an ancestor containing cow’s udder - but a recogniseable pumpkin pie nontheless. The first edition of Epulario was in 1516, but it is accepted to be a plagiarised copy of the work of Maestro Martino of Como at least half a century before. The recipe I give you today is from the 1598 English translation, grandly entitled Epulario, Or, The Italian Banquet; Wherein is shewed the maner how to dresse and prepare all kind of Flesh, Foules, or Fishes. As also how to make Sauces, Tartes, Pies, &c. After the Manner of all Countries. Translated out of the Italian into English..

To make a Tart of Pompeons.
Take Pompeons and make them cleane and grate them as you doe Cheese, and boile them a little in broth and milk, then take as much Cheese as aforesaid, adde to it also a little old Cheese, take also a pound of the panch [paunch] of a Hogge, or a Cowes Udder well sodden [boiled] and chopped small, and if you will you may use Butter instead of those two things aforesaid, or Suet, adding to it halfe a pound of Sugar, a little Saffron and Sinamon with a quart of milk, and Egges, as need requireth. And when you thinke the Pompeons are sodden, take them up and straine them, and colour it with Saffron, then make a crust of past under it, put it in a pan, and make a soft fire both under and over it, and being half baked, cover it with Wafers or such like stuffe instead of an upper crust, and being thorow baked, straw it with Sugar and Rosewater.

Monday’s Story …

A dispensation for St Pat’s Day.

Quotation for the Day …

Her washing ended with the day,
Yet lived she at its close,
And passed the long, long night away
In darning ragged hose.
But when the sun in all its state
Illumed the Eastern skies,
She passed about the kitchen grate
And went to making pies.
‘The Wife’ Phoebe Cary (1824-1871)

Pi(e) No. 4

March 13 ...

Something that continues to intrigue me is the vast difference between the interpretation of the unqualified word ‘pie’ in America and Australia. In the States, ‘a pie’ is unequivocally a sweet dish. In Australia a ‘pie’ is indisputably a savoury meat item – and more. The meat pie is Australia is an iconic dish – although the edible reality often falls short of the dream, which is why it (the commercial variety which is the default fodder at sports games) is affectionately referred to as a ‘maggot bag’ or ‘fly cemetery’.

The sweet-or-savoury discussion would have been meaningless in medieval times when sugar was an expensive imported luxury and was used in the same way as a spice, and added to almost every dish in a rich man’s house. The echo remains in the name of our Christmas ‘mincemeat’ pies, which now don’t contain meat at all. ‘Sweet’ and fruit additions to all sorts of savoury recipes was still common in the eighteenth century, and in ways that would seem quite adventurous and cutting edge if we saw the ideas on a restaurant menu today. The first cookery book to be published in Scotland was Mrs McLintock’s Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work in 1736, and she gives an interesting recipe for Chicken Pye, with several variations involving fruit, and with two different ‘pastes’ for the bottom (the ‘coffin’) and top of the pie.

To make a Chicken Pye.
Lay your Chickens in your Pye, lay the bottoms of Artichokes with them if they can be got, take Nutmeg, black Pepper, Jamaica Pepper, and good Store of Fresh Butter, so close your Pye: you may have a Caudle* ready to put in at the Lumb, when it comes out of the Oven. If you make your Pye with Gooseberries, let the Butter and Spices be the same with the former; give good Store of Sugar. If it be not the Time of Gooseberries, take Currans and Rasins, and let your Liquor by White Wine and Vinegar. Take 2 lib. of Butter and a Peck of Flour, melt the Butter in boiling Water, and work it very well for all sorts of raised Past: for cold Paste, take 3 lib. and a half of Butter for each Peck of Flour, and wet the Flour with cold Water, then roll in your butter. For Puff-Paste, for each Peck of Flour take 4 lib. and an half of sweet Butter, and the Whites of 4 Eggs and beat them a little, take a little of the Flour and mix it with the Eggs and cold Water, and work them well together, till it comes to a Paste thick for rolling out, then roll it out, put Flour beneath that it may not stick to the Table, and put on the Butter, strawing a handful of Flour over the Butter, then fold it together, and roll in out 6 or 7 Times, always strewing Flour upon it every Time it is rolled out, and so apply it to the Use you desire.

*A caudle was a sort of pre-prepared sauce or ‘liquor’ that was poured in via the ‘lumb’ or hole in the top of pie, after it was cooked.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pi(e) No. 5

Quotation for the Day …

I am convinced that digestion is the great secret of life and that character, talents, virtues, and qualities are powerfully affected by beef, mutton, pie-crust and rich soups.
Sydney Smith, in The Smith of Smiths by Hesketh Pearson (1934)

Pi(e) No. 3

March 12 ...

It would hardly be acceptable for a week of pies to be without one example of an apple pie, now would it? You would probably all immediately cease reading these stories in protest.

Undoubtedly, one of the experts in the various forms of apple-in-pastry was the Herefordshire farmer, William Ellis, who wrote a wonderful and comprehensive book called The Country Housewife's Family Companion or Profitable Directions for whatever relates to the Management and good Economy, published in 1750. This is what he has to say on the topic:

Of Apple-Pyes, and Apple Pasties, for Harvest and other Times.
Apple Pyes and Pasties are a main Part of a prudent, frugal Farmer’s Family-Food, because the Meal and Apples that make them are commonly the Produce of his Land, and are ready at all Times to be made use of in Pyes or Pasties, for giving his Family and agreeable palatable Repast; a covered or turn-over Pasty for the Filed, and the round Pye for the House; the first being of a Make and Size that better suits the Hand and Pocket than the round Pye, and therefore are more commonly made in Farmers Families; for one, or a Piece of one, being carried in the Plowman’s and Plowboys Pocket, sustains their hunger till they come home to Dinner, and oftentimes pleases them beyond some sort of more costly Eatables; nor is it less wholesome than pleasant, for that the Ingredients of the Apple-pye are rather Antidotes against, than Promoters of the Scurvy. In short, it is the Apple Pye and Pasty, and Apples made use of in some other Shapes (particularly the famous Parsnip Apple) that I take to be some of the cheapest and most agreeable Food a Farmer’s Family can make use of.

I don’t know if such a thing as the ‘parsnip apple’ is still grown in England, but if it is not it should be, if it is as good as Farmer Ellis says:

A Character of the famous Parsnip Apple, and its Uses.
From whence this apple is so called, I cannot tell; but this I know, that it is the very best of apples for pyes, pasties, and puddings in harvest time, and for eating (baked or raw) single as they are; they are always the first apples that are ripe with us, for they commonly begin to drop from the tree about the middle of August, some of them weighing four ounces apiece; and I think I can affirm it for truth, that I have had above twenty bushels in one season off one tree only ……

Farmer Ellis gives a number of recipes for pastry and pies, but this one is my favourite.

Onion Pye made by labouring Mens Wives.
They mix chopt Apples and Onions in equal Quantities, and with some Sugar put them into Dough-crust and bake them: This by some is thought to make as good a Pie as Pumkins do. It is a Heredfordshire Contrivance.

I know that onions when cooked slowly become sweet, but that is a very brave combination. It was an idea, I guess, born out of necessity– onions being available to everyone with a small cottage garden, and having even better keeping qualities than apples. Just the thing when the labouring man comes home hungry and demanding apple pie when there are only a few apples left in the pantry.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pi(e) No. 4

Quotation for the Day …

Apple-pie is used through the whole year, and when fresh apples are no longer to be had, dried ones are used. It is the evening meal of children. house-pie, in country places, is made of apples neither peeled nor freed from their cores, and its crust is not broken if a wagon wheel goes over it. Rev. Israel Acrelius, a Swedish parson, writing home from America (1758)

Pi(e) No. 2

March 11 ...

One would not normally consider an ornithology book to be the source of an interesting recipe, but Bird Life of Heligoland, published in 1895 by ‘Herr Gäthes’ had an interesting recipe for Gull Pie, ‘Heligolandish fashion’. I don’t believe I have ever given you a recipe for gull before, and I have certainly never given you one from Heligoland. To be perfectly honest, I had to look it up. Heligoland (or Helgoland) is an island in the North Sea belonging to Germany.

This is the extract of the book, as given by The Scotsman newspaper.

“During November and December they [Kittiwake Gulls] are remarkably fat, and are then considered a delicacy: and although ‘a certain Greenland flavour’ clings to them, nevertheless, when I shot them myself, I used to relish them considerably when prepared in Heligolandish fashion. By this method, some coarse pearl barley is boiled, with water and some salt, over a moderate fire until it is half cookd, and then spread over the bottom of a stone-ware of brass saucepan; next to this comes a layer of gull, which is covered with a layer of barley, and so on, until the quantity of the layers corresponds with the number of individuals in the family. The whole is topped by a layer of dough sprinkled with raisins. This primitive pie is allowed to cook for three hours in a baking oven, and is served at the mid-day meal. In serving, the basin or saucepan is turned upside down on a dish, its contents, baked to a beautiful brown, and shining with fat, are thus dislodged in more or less perfect shape, and certainly present all the appearances of a very tempting dish.”

The writer of the review felt compelled to add “ To the above recipe we would desire to add – after ‘layers of gull’ after cooking only the breasts and meat without the bones or skins."

We could, of course, debate at some length as to whether or not this recipe represents a true pie - but then you wouldnt need to read the book, would you?

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pi(e) No. 3

Quotation for the Day …

I live on toasted lizards,
Prickly pears, and parrot gizzards,
And I’m really very fond of beetle-pie.

Charles Edward Carryl (1841–1920), U.S. poet

Pi(e) No. I.

March 10...

Here beginneth The Week of Pies.

Pi Day commemorates the mathematical symbol Pi, and it is the day when mathematicians around the world toss aside the tools of their trade (whatever they are) and try to have fun. Pi (or π, if you want to be fancy), is the mathematical constant that represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, and it is important because without it we would not be able to make perfectly regular pies. I am told that Pi is an irrational number, which I found interesting, as wrestling with any sort of numbers makes me quite irrational. Anyway, it means that it is a never-ending number. Even though it is indisputably never-ending, there are a lot of people who try to remember as many decimal places as they can. I am not quite sure why they do this. I am content with the first two decimal places, which make Pi equal to 3.14, which, by a stroke of amazing coincidence, can be seen as a way of indicating ‘March 14’. By this brilliant mathematical logic, Friday of this week will be Pi Day.

Such an important mathematical and baking day requires a week of preparation, does it not? A week of Pi(es) also allows me to give you some of the ‘out-takes’ from my book The Pie: A Celebratory History, which is now safely in the hands of Reaktion Press, and I hope will be in many of yours at future but yet-to-be-disclosed date.

I will endeavour to give you recipes you may not have come across before, as well as some clever observations on pies and pie-making from cookbook authors over the centuries.

Observations on Pies, No. 1.

To the following comments on pie-making we are indebted to Sir Theodore Mayerne. They are taken from his book Archimagirus Anglo-Gallicus, published in 1658. It must surely be in the running for a prize for the most-obscurely titled cookery book of the century - as befits a jargon-inclined medical man, and a royally-appointed one at that. Sir Theodore modestly indicated in the frontispiece of his book that he was 'Physician to the late King Charles’.

“You must generally observe that no kind of flesh whatsoever may be put in paste before it be mortified, therefore you must let that flesh which you do intend to put in paste to be sufficiently mortified, which may be done by hanging it in the Aire, or by burying of it under ground, for the space of twenty and four houres, after which you must beat the said flesh-meat more or less with a wooden rowlett or Pestell according to the said fleshes thickness and hardness, which is a third way to mortifie it: so likewise must you observe that beef and mutton must be more beaten and mortified , than any other flesh whatsoever.”

The very first recipe in Mayerne's book is for a pie, and it would not be too difficult to make as there is only a little sparrow-flesh to deal with – all the other ingredients can remain unhung, unburied, and unbeaten.

The London Pie.
Take of Marrow-bons, eight, cock-Sparrowes, or Larks, eighteen, Potato-roots, one pound, Eringo-roots, a quarter of a pound, Lattice-stalks two ounces, Chestnuts forty, Dates half a pound, Oysters, a peck, Citron-rindes preserved, a quarter of a pound, Hartichokes, two or three, Yelks of hard Egs, twelve, Lemmons sliced, two, Barberries picled, one handfull, Gross Pepper, a quarter of an ounce, Large mace half an ounce, Corrents a quarter of a pound. Liquor it when it is baked with white-wine, butter and sugar.

If you want more, the recipe archive contains some lovely pies:

Pie of Bull’s Testicles (16th C)
A Lambstone and Sweetbread Pye. (1720-40)
Parrot Pie (late 19th C)
To make minced Herring Pies. (1660)
Tourte of young pigeons. (1653)
Tourte of Beatilles. (1653)
Pie of Turkie. (1653)
Lark, or Sparrow Pye. (1736)
Yorkshire Goose Pie (1769)
Eel Pie. (1861)
Bride Pie [1660]
Pies with live birds and frogs (1665)
A sea Pie.(1831)
Australian Meat Pie. [1888]
Birk Hall Excursion Pie [1909]
How to make Venison, Beef, or Mutton Pasty.[1690]
Blood Pie for a Side Dish (1702)
Sea Pie (19^th C)
Richmond Eel Pie.[1863]
To bake Beef red Deer fashion in Pies or Pasties, either Surloin, Brisket, Buttock, or Fillet, larded or not. [1660]
Old Maid’s Pie [1948]
To make a Calf’s Head Pye. [1747]
Hottentot Pie. [1769]
A Tart of the Brain of a Capon. [1682]

Tomorrow’s Story …

Pi(e) No. 2

Quotation for the Day …

[re: Pie] A word whose meaning has evolved in the course of many centuries and which varies to some extent according to country or even region. Many languages lack a truly equivalent word, since pies, in the Ango-American sense of the word, are indigenous to Europe, especially C and N Europe, and occur elsewhere only as introduced dishes. Alan Davidson; Oxford Companion to Food.

Very Wild Meats.

February 1

When Charles Darwin was in deepest darkest South America, he was eating supper one night and was suddenly ‘struck with horror at thinking I was eating one of the favourite dishes of the country, namely a half formed calf, long before its proper time of birth.’ He was somewhat relieved to find that his supper was in fact another local delicacy – puma. Funny, how puma was acceptable to him but unborn veal was not. As Dr Samuel Johnson said ‘It is not easy to fix the principles upon which mankind have agreed to eat some animals and reject others; and as the principle is not evident, it is not uniform.’

A butcher-man called Thomas Farrington De Voe wrote a wonderfully detailed and fascinating account of the public markets of the city of New York in 1867, and it is one of the treasures of the Feeding America site (look for The Market Assistant). Mr. de Voe noted that the advance of agriculture had played its part in the extermination of many of the wilder species of game, and that in earlier times, when ‘anything unusual’ appeared, it was generally noticed in the press. He gives as an example an advertisement that had appeared several decades before, in the Commercial Advertiser, on February 1, 1823:

"WILD MEATS. Our markets are not only well supplied with every variety of domestic meat and fowls, but there is a great variety of wild meats and wild game. Mr. Sykes (who kept the New York Coffee-house) has a fine bear (weighing two hundred pounds), which he is soon to serve up to his friends; and we yesterday saw, at Fulton-market, two wagons, from Sullivan County, N.Y., the one filled with white hares and partridges, and the other with venison. On the top of the bucks, which were stowed closely, stood a fierce-looking panther, almost eight feet long, as if to guard the buck-tailed tribe. The panther was killed in Sullivan County, about two weeks since."

The big cats, even if it when it was not ethically incorrect to eat them, were never regular and common items of diet for relatively modern humans. Carnivorous beasts do not seem to be favoured fodder for the human omnivore. We prefer our food to have taken its food from green pastures (or at least we like the myth that they do.) Another limiting factor in the consumption of big cats is obviously the danger inherent in hunting them, and most of our information about the taste of the meat comes from adventurers like Charles Darwin, who said ‘the meat is very white, and remarkably like veal in taste’, or fearless frontiersmen who have described it as being ‘excellent eating, ‘a good deal like mutton’, having ‘a sweet and cattish taste’, and certainly better than ‘wolf mutton’ (coyote meat).

I don’t know if there are panthers anymore in Sullivan County N.Y. If there are, it is surely and rightly prohibited to hunt and eat them. Clearly I cannot give you a recipe for panther meat, so instead offer one of the ‘out-takes’ from my book on the history of the pie. It is a Hottentot pie – a brief culinary mystery of the eighteenth century, perhaps named for its exotic mix of ingredients.

Hottentot Pie.
Boil and bone two calf’s feet, clean very well a calf’s chitterling, boil it and chop it small, take two chickens and cut them up as for eating, put them in a stew-pan with two sweet-breads, a quart of veal or mutton gravy, half an ounce of morels, Chyan [cayenne] pepper and salt to your palate, stew them all together an hour over a gentle fire, then put in six force-meat balls that have been boiled, and the yolks of four hard eggs, and put them in a good raised crust that has been baked for it, strew over the top of your pie a few green peas boiled as for eating; or peel and cut some young green brocoli stalks about the size of peas, give them a gentle boil, and strew them over the top of your pie, and send it up hot without a lid, the same way as a French pie.
[The Experienced English Housekeeper; Elizabeth Raffald; 1769]

Monday’s Story …

An explosive cocktail.

Quotation for the Day …

The most basic rule of survival in any situation is "never look like food”. Park Ranger, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.