Subject: British Meat Pies?

From: [email-masked] (Erik. A Speckman)
Date: 8 Jul 93 05:26:12 GMT

With all the discussion on rec.food.cooking about British cooking, I
became curious about why there seem to be so many different meat pies in
British cooking.  Does anyone know why this type of preparation is prolific?

---Sarah Henderson

--
 -Erik [email-masked]

 	I don't want the world, I just want your half.

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From: [email-masked] (S. Kleinman)
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1993 08:56:00 GMT

>British cooking.  Does anyone know why this type of preparation is prolific?
The proliferation of meat pies is easy to explain.  The British *worship*
the great god Pastry...

-- 
    Scott Kleinman                                     [email-masked]

                   Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre delicat,
                    - Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frere!

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From: [email-masked] (K.M. Jeary)
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 1993 16:27:50 GMT

In article  <[email-masked]>  [email-masked] 
(S. Kleinman) writes:

Not necessarily as simple as that, I think. It is true that there is a great deal of 'pastry'
in modern British off-the-shelf stuff, but this is more to do with food
manufacturers wishing to pass on value-added rubbish than the British genuinely
worshipping pastry. The point of course is that pastry has been used since the
Middle Ages (and possibly before) as a container for other things eg Cornish
pasty, meat-pies etc for food that was often carried to places of work, down
mines, into the fields etc. And in high mediaeval cookery it was used similarly
as a container. There are plenty of references to 'coffy/ins' (of pastry) etc,
some even broken open to release birds. It is clear that nobody was expected to
*eat* the coffins... The French also use pastry a lot (if with rather more
imagination than we do).

Of course it depends on what you regard as pastry - does this include the
Greek 'filo', Austrian 'strudel' pastry ,Turkish and other versions or is
your frame of reference rather more narrow than that?

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From: [email-masked] (Terry Nutter)
Date: 13 Jul 93 04:43:40 GMT

Hi, from Terry Nutter.  K.M. Jeary wrote,

>                    The point of course is that pastry has been used since the
>mines, into the fields etc.

I don't know about "portable food" in the Middle Ages (or even where in the
contemporary literature I'd look to find out), but certainly "high cuisine"
(the sort of thing that survives through cookbooks) includes items cooked in
crusts, some closed but many open.

>                            And in high mediaeval cookery it was used similarly
>some even broken open to release birds. 

With you up to here (though the "let the livestock out" bit tends to get greatly
exaggerated).

>                                        It is clear that nobody was expected to
>*eat* the coffins... 

Here you lose me.  What is your evidence for this claim?  I am familiar with a
number of recipes that specify flavorings to go into crusts.  Some of these,
like saffron, may be for appearance's sake; but sugar?  I don't think so.  It
is more common, of course, simply to say some version of "put it in a crust".
But I know of _no_ recipes (except the very rare "livestock" ones, which aren't
dishes at all, but jokes) that indicate that the filling is to be removed
from the crust before serving.  Given that other kinds of recipes _do_ give
instructions for how to deliver the food if you don't just ladle it out of
a pot, this seems to me a surprising omission, if what you say is true.

On the other hand, I know of several cases where it is profoundly unlikely that
any such removal is meant, even were it normally the rule.  For instance,
there are recipes from the 13th C forward for perfectly recognizable ravioli: 
cheese filling boiled inside a "foil" of dough.  There are also recipes for 
very small filled pastries that are fried.  I don't see how one would go about 
leaving the covering, except by taking the business apart at table with one's
fingers and setting it aside.  Given that the ravioles are to be served on
and covered by layers of hot cheese and butter, that again seems unlikely.

So far as I can tell from recipes, at least in the 13th through 15th centuries,
coffins (and traps, and other sorts of crusts) were indeed eaten.

Cheers,

Terry Nutter     Blacksburg, VA     [email-masked]     (703)552-1598