Come Celebrate British Pie Week with The Good Pub Guide

A pie by any other name

When is a pie not a pie? In Britain, a pie sometimes has a bottom but always has a pastry top. When it’s topless, it’s called a tart. However, in the United States, a pie is usually what the British call a tart.

The History of Pies

Pies date back thousands of years to the Ancient Egyptians who are thought to have been the first people to enjoy them. Their pies were rather different from those we know today in that they were made from oil, which makes for a rather floppy pastry suitable only for flat pies. The Ancient Greeks are said to have eaten a form of pie too, although details of these have long since been lost. And the Romans also ate pies, using two sorts of pastry. One, made from flour, oil and water, was only used to encase meat and poultry before baking, to seal in the juices, and the pastry itself was not eaten. The other, a richer style of pastry, was wrapped around small birds to be served at banquets, and was eaten. When the Romans invaded Britain and other parts of Northern Europe, they took their cooking techniques with them, including those for making pastry. Over time, oil was gradually replaced with lard and butter, leading to the sort of pastry with which we’re more familiar today.

Medieval pastry – known in Britain as huff paste – was eaten by servants only; their employers would discard it, its sole purpose being simply to create a solid container for the pie’s ingredients. The flour itself was stronger than before, often made from coarsely ground rye, and suet was mixed with hot water to create an early form of hot-water crust pastry. Considering that clean water was something of a luxury and therefore people’s hands were often dirty, perhaps it is just as well that most pastry cases were thrown away!

Huff paste could be moulded into a variety of tart shapes, called ‘coffyns’ or ‘coffers’. One benefit of these early pies was that they preserved their meat contents for up to three months (if sealed with clarified butter) and protected them from contamination. Large preserved pies were often made by country dwellers and sent as gifts to their friends in towns.

Pastry gradually grew more tempting as the ingredients became more refined and sophisticated, with small sweet tarts made from egg custard and fruit being particularly popular. They looked elaborate and the ingredients were chosen for their vivid colours, in the fashion of the time. Tarts that combined sweet and savoury flavours were also in great demand.

Do you know how the Pie got its name?

The name ‘pie’ is thought to be derived from ‘magpie’; a magpie is an inveterate collector of different objects and early pies contained a mixture of ingredients. Pasties on the other hand were made from a single ingredient, whether sweet or savoury.

To read more from Pies: Recipes, History & Snippets by Jane Struthers or to buy the book, please click here

The Best Pub Pies?

The Good Pub Guide of course can point you in the right direction... we have sampled some of the best throughout the UK including; The-Grenadier, The Jugged-Hare, Sweeney-Todd, and Wyvill-Arms.

Please check out the Face of British Pie Week, Keystone in Guildford, Surrey. To find out why Keystone will be having all the attention during British Pie Week, please click here

The Royal Oak in Hampshire is also widely recommended, as is Pear Tree in Cambridgeshire but please be aware it is closed on Monday afternoons for pie making!

Does your local do a good pie? If so please come and tell us!

Happy British Pie Week, from the Good Pub Guide!