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Savoury pies. © Paula Trites / 2010
Savoury pies are non-sweet, “salty rather than sweet” pies served as meals or snacks, rather than as a dessert.
The category includes dishes such as fish pies, Cornish pasties, chicken pot pies, Melton Mowbray pork pies, shepherd’s pie, cottage pie, tourtière, etc.
Savoury pies were — and still are — a good way of stretching meat that is limited in quantity.
Throughout most of history, the pie crust wasn’t eaten (see separate entry on pastry crust.) But now, generally, unless the dish is something such as shepherd’s pie and cottage pie where the “crust” is mashed potato, a minimum of a bottom crust is both expected — and consumed. And, for savoury pie fans, a top crust as well, and a side crust is a real bonus. For them, a savoury pie is all about the crust.
Historically, pies used to be all savoury for the most part: it is sweet pies that are the innovation in food history.
History Notes
In the Middle Ages, the crust wasn’t meant to be eaten, it was just a container to cook in. You broke it open and ate the stuff inside and left the crust. The crust would have been made from cheap flours such as rye. Its purpose was just to act as a container to keep all the moisture in and stop what you were cooking from drying out. Later recipes had the crust made from wheat flour, which would have been more expensive, and butter, so by that point the crust would have been eaten.
Literature & Lore
“However, there are pies and pies. The English custom serves a meat or game pie, either hot or cold, for breakfast, and this is certainly more to be commended. Pie being among those dishes considered rather indigestible, even for the hearty and robust, should be given plenty of time during the most active hours of day for digestion: therefore, the morning or midday meal is the proper time for pie-eating. The immunity enjoyed by those, who, in certain rural sections, still observe the custom of serving pie for breakfast, may be accounted for by the active, outdoor life they lead which calls for a larger amount of “staying” food than the less active and less exposed workers could possibly accommodate with comfort of safety.” — Table and Kitchen Column. Trenton, New Jersey. The Trenton Times. Thursday, 23 January 1902. Page 6.
The following is a World War One pamphlet issued by the USDA encouraging people to make meat go further by using it in pies.
World War 1 Pamphlet encouraging people to stretch meat by using it in pies. (Make a Little Meat Go a Long Way. United States Food Administration. Food Leaflet #5 of 7. 1917. Women’s Archives Minnie Fisher Cunningham Papers, 1914-1944 02/2006-010)
Language Notes
Pie was spelled “pye” in Middle English. “Coffyn” was the word for crust.
Types of savoury pies
Aussie Meat Pies
Aussie Meat Pies (or Australian Meat Pies) are a style of meat pie typically made in Australia.They are usually individual-portion size, with not a lot of runny sauce inside them, so that they can be eaten out of hand as a take-away fast food....
Cottage Pie
Minced or chopped beef, mixed or topped with vegetables, then topped with mashed potatoes and baked.Before mincing machines came along in the 1870s, it would have been made with chunks of meat, and before the British grudgingly started eating the...
Cow-Heel Pie
Cow-Heel Pie is a dish made in Lancashire, England.Despite its name, it's really a meat pie, that just happens to use the heel (aka "fetlock") of a cow to thicken it, producing a rich, unctuous, lip-sticking gravy.You can buy cow heels at some...
Devizes Pie
Devizes Pie was a pie made in Wiltshire, England. It has has long since fallen out of fashion.The pie's filling is made from: cold trimmed calves' head slices calve's brain pickled tongue sweetbreads meat from the calf meat...
Fray Bentos Pies
Fray Bentos Pies are savoury pies that come in a pie-pan shaped, sealed in. Each tin weighs 475g (17oz.)The tin is lined with uncooked puff pastry dough. Filling is put in, then a top layer of puff pastry put on, then the tin sealed with a top.To...
Friday Pie
Friday Pie is a Potato and Onion pie, traditionally served on Fridays when meat couldn't be eaten.It is made in Lancashire, England. You can also buy it in shops in Lancashire. It can be made in normal pie sizes, or in individual portion pies as...
Hornazo
Hornazo is a Spanish large, relatively-flat, free-formed meat pie, or filled bread.It is particularly popular in the Salamanca and Ávila areas of Spain.The filling is a mixture of ground pork loin, chorizo sausage pieces and hard-boiled eggs. ...
Huntingdon Fidget Pie
Huntingdon Fidget Pie is a traditional English savoury meat pie. It is made throughout the Midlands, though some feel that its true home is the former county of Huntingdonshire, now folded into Cambridgeshire.The pie filling is made from fatty bacon...
Lac-Saint-Jean Tourtière
Known as "Tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean" or "Tourtière Saguenéenne", this version of tourtière as made in the the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean region of Québec is a meat pie made in a deep casserole such as a Dutch oven, and consequently the pie turns ...
Melton Mowbray Pork Pies
A Melton Mowbray Pork Pie is a raised, cylinder-shaped pork pie. They are available in sizes from a few inches (5 cm) to several inches (several dm) tall.They are made in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, in what is called the "pork pie belt" of England.The...
Muggety Pie
Muggety Pie is a meat pie, traditionally made in Cornwall, England. The meat inside the pie is offal, usually stewed intestines.The word "Muggots" in Cornwall meant intestines from a pig, and sometimes a calf. [1]Here is an 1839 definition:...
Pasticcio
A general term used to describe a dish made from a wide variety of ingredients on hand.Over time, in Italian, it came to denote a pie with a savoury filling with a top and bottom pie crust. Pasta is often even put inside the pie.Language Notes...
Pork Pies
There are many different culinary traditions in making Pork Pies, such as the Tortière made in Québec, but it's in England that Pork Pies have been raised to a fine art.The pork pie belt in England stretches through the Midlands from the border w...
Shepherd's Pie
Shepherd's pie is made with lamb or mutton, either already cooked or not, with some flavouring vegetables such as onion mixed in, then topped with mashed potato and baked.It's often served with garden peas.If the dish is made with a meat other...
Stand Pies
Stand pies are tall pies with sturdy crusts. They are from an era before pie tins and moulds were invented, so a pie had to be capable of standing up on its own with no support.
Stokenchurch Pie
Stokenchurch Pie is an interesting dish, in that it's considered a traditional dish in Buckinghamshire, though not "ancient."It uses macaroni, so obviously it came about after pasta was introduced into England.Recipes for Stokenchurch Pie just...
Tartiflette Tart
Tartiflette is a French savoury pie.There are many variations on how to make this.A casserole dish is buttered. Into this is placed a layer of fried diced potatoes. Some recipes have you boil them then slice them first; other recipes have you...
Tourtière (Québécois)
Tourtière as made in Quebec is a meat pie.It consists of a bottom layer of pie pastry, then a layer of meat filling, then a top covering layer of pie pastry. The pie is then baked in an oven.Spices used in the meat filling can include cinnamon, ...
Other names
Italian: Torta
French: Tartes salées
German: Pastete (die)
Dutch: Taart, Vlaai
Spanish: Pay
Portuguese: Torta aberta
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Tagged With: American Food, British Food, Pies