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The first pies, called "coffins" or "coffyns" were savory meat pies with the crusts or pastry being tall,
straight-sided with sealed-on floors and lids. Open-crust pastry (not tops or lids) were known as "traps." These
pies held assorted meats and sauce components and were baked more like a modern casserole with no pan (the crust itself was
the pan, its pastry tough and inedible). The purpose of a pastry shell was mainly to serve as a storage container and serving
vessel, and these are often too hard to actually eat. A small pie was known as a tartlet and a tart was a large, shallow
open pie (this is still the definition in England). Since pastry was a staple ingredient in medieval menus, pastry making
was taken for granted by the majority of early cookbooks, and recipes are not usually included. It wasn't until the 16th century
that cookbooks with pastry ingredients began appearing. Historian believe this was because cookbooks started appearing for
the general household and not just for professional cooks.
"Pie...a word whose meaning has evolved in the course of many centuries and which varies to some extent according to
the country or even to region....The derivation of the word may be from magpie, shortened to pie. The explanation offered
in favour or this is that the magpie collects a variety of things, and that it was an essential feature of early pies that
they contained a variety of ingredients....Early pies were large; but one can now apply the name to something small, as the
small pork pies or mutton pies...Early pies had pastry tops, but modern pies may have a topping of something else...or even
be topless. If the basic concept of a pie is taken to mean a mixture of ingredients encased and cooked in pastry, then proto-pies
were made in the classical world and pies certainly figured in early Arab cookery."
"As a favored dish of the English, pies were baked in America as soon as the early settlers set up housekeeping on dry
land. Beyond mere preference, howevers, there was a practical reason for making pies, especially in the harsh and primitive
conditions endured by the first colonists. A piecrust used less flour than bread and did not require anything as complicated
as a brick oven for baking. More important, though, was how pies could stretch even the most meager provisions into sustaining
a few more hungry mouths...No one, least of all the early settlers, would probably proclaim their early pies as masterpieces
of culinary delight. The crusts were often heavy, composed of some form of rough flour mixed with suet."
Pie is the master of the Freak'n UNIVERSE!!! Mah ha ha ha ha ha!!!
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