The cases, which could be several inches thick, according to Janet Clarkson, author of Pie: A History, were perhaps not even intended to be edible. Even once fat had begun to be added to the dough, bringing us into the realm of modern pastry, a pie crust was still sometimes considered more as a kind of primitive Tupperware.
A well-baked meat pie, with liquid fat poured into any steam holes left open and left to solidify, might even be kept for up to a year, with the crust apparently keeping out air and spoilage. It seems difficult to fathom today, but as Clarkson reflects, "it was such a common practice that we have to assume that most of the time consumers survived the experience".
''I do not know everything; still many things I understand.'' Goethe
Observations by me and others of our tribe ... mostly me and my better half--youngsters have their own blogs
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Pies
I need to keep an eye out for Pie: A History. From BBC:
I feel obliged to like both types of minced pie, meat or fruit, in solidarity with my Puritan ancestors. No one else in the family is interested. In colonial times, and I believe through the 19th C, a mince pie was primarily meat, with fruit and spices.
ReplyDeleteMy mother and grandmother canned both meat in gravy and mincemeat, and made mincemeat pie a few times when I was a kid. I suspect my parents weren't big fans as the practice stopped after my grandmothers passed (or possibly, when the USDA started recommending against water-bath canning low-acid/low-sugar food like meat). I'm not sure how Scandinavian mincemeat is but a lot of my mother's food history were actually English dishes prepared by her ancestors when they were household help in Knox County (Galesburg), IL, and adopted as special occasion meals.
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