pie facts

other meanings of pie

a pie is also:

• a prize, a treat or bribe (U.S.slang 1895);
• a collection of pre-Reformation church rules;
• a jumble, medley, confusion, chaos; a "mess";
• the smallest Anglo-Indian copper coin, the twelfth part of an anna.

from: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

other names for a pie:

• pastie,
• oggie,
• piraski,
• piragies,
• patty,
• turnover.

old pies

"So in medieval times you could take your capon or goose to the cookshop to be baked in a pastry (this cost eight pence in the fourteenth century)."

from: Cooking the British Way by Joan Gibbon.

more old pies

"The great Dr Johnson generally had a meat pie ( made with rancid butter) for his Sunday lunch, baked in a public oven. 'Thus', he told Boswell 'the advantage is obtained of not keeping servants from Church to dress dinners.'"

from: Cooking the British Way by Joan Gibbon.

very old pies

Pie pastry is believed to have been created by the ancient Greeks.

The Romans soon took it up. A recipe for "placenta" (ancient Greek for a cake) is recorded in "De Agricultura" written by Cato the Elder (234-149 B.C.).

This was a sheep's cheese and honey cake wrapped in pastry and oiled laurel (bay) leaves.