Get pie-eyed
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WILL you be tucking into some patriotic pastry over the next few days?
It’s British Pie Week, so there’s never been a better excuse to get your laughing gear round the 1
The ancient Egyptians made the first pies.
They had a casing made from oats, wheat, rye or barley and were filled with honey. Examples can be found on the tomb walls of Pharoah Ramesses II. One 2000BC Sumerian tablet contains a recipe for chicken pie.
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The Egyptians also came up with pastry pies made from water and flour, an idea taken up by the Romans who put meat and seafood in theirs. But they didn’t eat the crusts. No wonder the Empire fell.
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By Medieval times pies had reached Britain and often included birds. In the 12th century pastry pies were often known as “coffyns”. Ones with poultry in sometimes had the legs left hanging over the side to be used as handles.
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Eel or lamprey pie was regularly sent to the English royal household.
King John even fined the city of Gloucester for forgetting to do it. It became traditional to send one every jubilee or coronation.
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Surprise pies were once a delicacy with posh English folk, where animals or people jumped out. At a 1626 dinner attended by Charles I and his queen, a dwarf named Jeffrey Hudson burst out of a pie.
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In 1644 Oliver Cromwell banned pies associated with Christmas, saying that they were a pagan form of pleasure. The ban was then lifted in 1660.
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The first recorded recipe for tasty comfort food. But how much do you know about where these delicious treats originated?
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Here, JAMES MOORE has cooked up a short (crust) history… apple pie came in a 1381 book by author Geoffrey Chaucer. Fruit pies became especially popular in Tudor times and the first cherry pie was baked for Queen Elizabeth I.
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The first recipe for steak and kidney pie came in 1694. Cottage pie didn’t come until 1791 and lamb-based shepherd’s pie, loved by Rolling Stones star Keith Richards, emerged in the 19th century.
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Pork pies emerged in the 18th Century in Melton Mowbray, Leic, where they were eaten by fox hunters.
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William Shakespeare’s 16th-Century play Titus Andronicus sees his Roman general character bake the two sons of Queen Tamora into a pie, then has it served to her.
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Some say the 19thCentury tale of Sweeney Todd, the murderous barber whose wife puts his victims into pies, was inspired by a real killer. It was made into a movie starring Johnny Depp.
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The first person to get a pie in the face on screen was in the US silent comedy Mr Flip, made in 1909.
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Fray Bentos pies got their name from the port in Uruguay, South America, where the meat for them was originally processed.
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The saying “humble pie” comes from “umble pie” once made from offal. “Pie-eyed” for drunk was first recorded as US slang in 1904.
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Loveable comic cowboy Desperate Dan ate his first cow pie in the pages of The Dandy back in 1937.
Favourite pies: Page 19