Pie

Early pies were in the form of flat, round or freeform crusty cakes called galettes consisting of a crust of ground oats, wheat, rye, or barley containing honey inside. These galettes developed into a form of early sweet pastry or desserts, evidence of which can be found on the tomb walls of the Pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled from 1304 to 1237 BC, located in the Valley of the Kings.[1] Sometime before 2000 BC, a recipe for chicken pie was written on a tablet in Sumer.[5]

Ancient Greeks are believed to have originated pie pastry. In the plays of Aristophanes (5th century BC), there are mentions of sweetmeats including small pastries filled with fruit. Nothing is known of the actual pastry used, but the Greeks certainly recognized the trade of pastry-cook as distinct from that of baker. (When fat is added to a flour-water paste it becomes a pastry.)

A 19th century depiction of a Roman feast, where pastry-covered meat dishes were served.

The Romans made a plain pastry of flour, oil, and water to cover meats and fowls which were baked, thus keeping in the juices. The Roman approach of covering "...birds or hams with dough" has been called more of an attempt to prevent the meat from drying out during baking than an actual pie in the modern sense.[4](The covering was not meant to be eaten; it filled the role of what was later called puff paste.) A richer pastry, intended to be eaten, was used to make small pasties containing eggs or little birds which were among the minor items served at banquets.[6] The first written reference to a Roman pie is for a rye dough that was filled with a mixture of goat's cheese and honey.[7]

The 1st-century Roman cookbook Apicius makes various mentions of recipes which involve a pie case.[8] By 160 BC, Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), who wrote De Agri Cultura, notes the recipe for the most popular pie/cake called placenta. Also called libum by the Romans, it was more like a modern-day cheesecake on a pastry base, often used as an offering to the gods. With the development of the Roman Empire and its efficient road transport, pie cooking spread throughout Europe.[1] Wealthy Romans combined many types of meats in their pies, including mussels and other seafood.[9] Roman pie makers generally used vegetable oils, such as olive oil, to make their dough.[7]

Pies remained as a staple of traveling and working peoples in the colder northern European countries, with regional variations based on both the locally grown and available meats, as well as the locally farmed cereal crop. In these colder countries, butter and lard were the main fats in use, which meant that pie cooks created dough that could be rolled flat and moulded into different shapes.[7] The Cornish pasty is an adaptation of the pie to a working man's daily food needs.[1] The first reference to "pyes" as food items appeared in England (in a Latin context) as early as the 12th century), but it is not clear that this referred to baked pies.

In the Medieval era, pies were usually savory meat pies made with "...beef, lamb, wild duck, magpie pigeon -- spiced with pepper, currants or dates".[9] Medieval cooks had restricted access to ovens due to their costs of construction and need for abundant supplies of fuel. Since pies could be easily cooked over an open fire, this made pies easier for most cooks to make. At the same time, by partnering with a baker, a cook could focus on preparing the filling. The earliest pie-like recipes refer to coffyns (the word actually used for a basket or box), with straight sealed sides and a top; open-top pies were called traps. The resulting hardened pastry was not necessarily eaten, its function being to contain the filling for cooking, and to store it, though whether servants may have eaten it once their masters had eaten the filling is impossible to prove.[10] The thick crust was so sturdy it had to be cracked open to get to the filling.[3] This may also be the reason why early recipes focus on the filling over the surrounding case, with this development leading to the use of reusable earthenware pie cases which reduced the use of expensive flour.[11] Medieval pie crusts were often baked first, to create a "pot" of baked dough with a removable top crust, hence the name pot pie.[7]

The first unequivocal reference to pie in a written source is in the 14th century (Oxford English Dictionary sb pie).[1] The eating of mince pies during festive periods is a tradition that dates back to the 13th century, as the returning Crusaders brought pie recipes containing "meats, fruits and spices".[7] Some pies contained cooked rabbits, frogs,[7] crows, and pigeons.[3] In 1390, the English cookbook A Forme of Cury had a recipe for “tartes of flesh”, which included a ground-up mixture of "pork, hard-boiled eggs, and cheese" blended with "spices, saffron, and sugar".[12] The 14th century French chef Taillevent instructed bakers to "crenelate" pie shells and "reinforce them so that they can support the meat"; one of his pies was high enough that it resembled a model of a castle, an illusion enhanced by miniature banners for the nobles at the event.[4]

Pies in the 1400s included birds, as song birds at the time were a delicacy and protected by Royal Law. At the coronation of eight-year-old English King Henry VI (1422–1461) in 1429, "Partrich" and "Pecok enhakill" were served, alleged by some modern writers to consist of cooked peacock mounted in its skin on a peacock-filled pie. The expressions "eat crow" and "four and 20 blackbirds" are sayings from the era when crow and blackbirds were eaten in pies.[3] Cooked birds were frequently placed by European royal cooks on top of a large pie to identify its contents, leading to its later adaptation in pre-Victorian times as a porcelain ornament to release of steam and identify a good pie.[1] The apple pie was first referenced in writing in 1589, when the poet R. Green wrote "Thy breath is like the seeme of apple pies".[9]

Medieval England had an early form of sweet pies, but they were called tarts and fruit pies were unsweetened, because sugar was a rare and costly "symbol of wealth".[3] In the Middle Ages, a pie could have a number of items as its filling, but a pastry would have only a single filling.[13]

A detail from Pieter Claesz' 1627 painting of turkey pie.

Until the start of the 15th century, pies were expected to contain meat or fish.[4] In the 15th century, custard and fruit pie recipes began appearing, often with dried fruit like dates and raisins (fresh fruit did not become widely used until sugar dropped in price during the 16th century).[4] The first fruit pie is recorded in the late 16th century, when Queen Elizabeth I was served cherry pie.[7] Queen Elizabeth I was often given gifts of quince or pear pies for New Years.[4] During the Shakespearean era, fruit pies were served hot, but others were served at room temperature, as they would be brought to the "...table more than once".[4] Apple pies were popular in Tudor and Stuart times. Pippins were baked with cloves, cinnamon, dates and candied orange peels. Rosewater was often added to apple pies.[14]

The Elizabethan food author Gervase Markham called for baking “Red Deer Venison, Wild-Boar, Gammons of Bacon, Swans, Elkes, Porpus and such like standing dishes, which must be kept long" in a "...moyst, thick, tough, course and long-lasting crust, and therefore of all other your Rye paste is best for that purpose.”[4] The largest pies of the era were "standing pies", which were baked with steam holes, which were then sealed with melted butter (which would harden to seal the pie), and then eaten over several months.[4]

During the Puritan era of Oliver Cromwell, some sources claim mince pie eating was banned as a frivolous activity for 16 years, so mince pie making and eating became an underground activity; the ban was lifted in 1660, with the Restoration of the monarchy.[7] Food historian Annie Gray suggests that the myth of the Puritans 'actively' banning mince pies came about 'due to the defenders of Christmas' who reported Puritain vitriol 'with a certain amount of exaggeration'.[15] In the 17th century, Ben Jonson described a skilled pie cook by comparing the cook to a fortification builder who "...Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish" and makes "dry-ditches", "bulwark pies" and "ramparts of immortal crusts".[4] In Gervase Markham's 1615 book The English Huswife, there is a pie recipe that calls for "an entire leg of mutton and three pounds of suet..., along with salt, cloves, mace, currants, raisins, prunes, dates, and orange peel", which made a huge pie that could serve a large group.[12]

In the Georgian era sweetened pies of meat and dried fruits began to become less popular. In recipe books of the period sweet veal, sweet lamb or sweet chicken pies are given alongside recipes for unsweetened alternatives with the same ingredients made for those who could "no longer stomach the sweetened flesh meats enjoyed by earlier generations".[14]

Pumpkin pies were eaten by 'people of substance' in England from the 1650s onwards but fell out of favour during the eighteenth century. Pumpkin was sliced, fried with sweet herbs sweetened with sugar and eggs were added. This was put into a pastry case with currants and apples. Pumpkin pie was introduced to America by early colonists where it became a national dish.[14]

Pigeon Pies

During the nineteenth-century pies became, according to food historian Janet Clarkson, 'universally esteemed' in a way that other foods were not.[2] In 1806 Mrs Rundell in her Observations on Savoury Pies in A New System of Domestic Cookery stated that 'There are few articles of cookery more generally liked than relishing pies, if properly made'. Alexis Soyer, a 'celebrity' cook of the nineteenth century said in his book Shilling Cookery for the People (1860) "From childhood we eat pies - from girlhood to boyhood we eat pies - in fact, pies in England may be considered as one of our best companions du voyage through life. It is we who leave them behind, not they who leave us; for our children and grandchildren will be as fond of pies as we have been; therefore it is needful that we should learn how to make them, and make them well! Believe me, I am not jesting, but if all the spoilt pies made in London on one single Sunday were to be exhibited in a row beside a railway line, it would take above an hour by special train to pass in review these culinary victims".[2]

The Pilgrim fathers and early settlers brought their pie recipes with them to America, adapting to the ingredients and techniques available to them in the New World. Settlers' recipes were for English-style meat pies.[9] The newcomers used the fruits and berries that they were familiar with from Europe, but also began incorporating North American vegetables and game that they were not familiar with, with guidance from Indigenous people.[16] Settlers favoured pies over bread because pies required less flour and did not require a brick bread oven, and because any mixture of ingredients could be added to pies to "stretch" their "meager provisions".[17] The apple pie made with American apples became popular, because apples were easy to dry and store in barrels over the winter.[17] Early American pies had thick, heavy crusts made with rough flour and suet.[17] As pioneers spread westward, pies continued to be an important supply of food; while apple pies made from dried apples were popular, cooks often had to use fillers or substitutes to stretch out their barrels of apples, such as crushed crackers, vinegar-soaked potatoes, sour green tomatoes and soft-shelled river turtle meat.[17]

The first Thanksgiving feast included fowl and venison, which may have been included in pies.[9] Colonists appreciated the food preservation aspect of crusty-topped pies, which were often seasoned with "dried fruit, cinnamon, pepper and nutmeg".[9] Their first pies included pies that were based on berries and fruits pointed out to them by the Native North Americans.[1] Pies allowed colonial cooks to use round shallow pans to literally "cut corners" and to create a regional variation of shallow pie.[18] By the late 1700s, cookbooks show a wide range of newly developed sweet pies.[9]

Pies became more refined with subsequent waves of immigrants; the Pennsylvania Dutch contributed a more aromatic, spiced, and less-sweet style of pie-making; the French brought the approach of making pie with butter and a range of tart, galette and pâté (forcemeat of meat and fish in dough) recipes.[17] Swedish immigrants in the plains states brought recipes for fish pie and berry pie; Finnish immigrants brought their recipes for pasties and meat pies.[17] In the northern states, pumpkin pie was popular, as pumpkins were plentiful.[17] Once the British had established Caribbean colonies, sugar became less expensive and more widely available, which meant that sweet pies could be readily made.[3] Molasses was popular in American pies due to the rum and slave trade with the Caribbean Islands, although maple syrup was an important sweetener in Northern states, after Indigenous people taught settlers how to tap maple trees and boil down the sap.[17] In the Midwest, cheese and cream pies were popular, due to the availability of big dairy farms.[17] In the US south, African-Americans enjoyed sweet potato pies, due to the widespread availability of this type of potato.[17]

By the 1870s, the new science of nutrition led to criticism of pies, notably by Sarah Tyson Rorer, a cooking teacher and food editor who warned the public about how much energy pies take to digest.[17] Rorer stated that all pie crusts "...are to be condemned" and her cookbook only included an apple tart, jelly and meringue-covered crackers, pâté, and a "hygienic pie" which had "apple slices or a pumpkin custard baked in biscuit dough".[4] In 1866, Harper's Magazine included an article by C.W. Gesner that stated that although we "...cry for pie when we are infants", "Pie kills us finally", as the "heavy crust" cannot be digested.[4]

Another factor that decreased the popularity of pies was industrialization and increasing movement of women into the labour market, which changed pie making from a weekly ritual to an "occasional undertaking" on special occasions.[17] In the 1950s, after WWII, the popularity of pies rebounded in the US, especially with commercial food inventions such as instant pudding mixes, Cool Whip topping, and Jello gelatin (which could be used as fillings) ready-made crusts, which were sold frozen, and alternative crusts made with crushed potato chips.[17] There was a pie renaissance in the 1980s, when old-fashioned pie recipes were rediscovered and a wide range of cross-cultural pies were explored.[17]

Cream filled or topped pies are favorite props for slapstick humor. Throwing a pie in a person's face has been a staple of film comedy since Ben Turpin received one in Mr. Flip in 1909.[23] More recently, pieing has also become a political act; some activists throw cream pies at politicians and other public figures as a form of protest.

• Savory pies
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  A chicken and lamb pie
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  A traditional Cornish pasty filled with steak and vegetables
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  A chicken pie with a traditional pie bird

Some of these pies are pies in name only, such as the Boston cream pie, which is a cake. Many fruit and berry pies are very similar, varying only the fruit used in filling. Fillings for sweet or fruity are often mixed, such as strawberry rhubarb pie.

• Sweet pies
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  Pumpkin pie showing texture of surface
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  Blackberry pie and ice cream
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  Raisin pie with a lattice-style crust
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  Pear-shaped pear pie with puff pastry
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  A slice of pecan pie
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  Jeûne Genevois plum pie