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Game pie
Game pie is a form of meat pie featuring game. The dish dates from Roman times when the main ingredients were wild birds and animals such as partridge, pheasant, deer, and hare. The pies reached their most elaborate form in Victorian England, with complex recipes and specialized moulds and serving dishes. Modern versions are simpler but savoury combinations of rabbit, venison, pigeon, pheasant, and other commercially available game.
Game pies were consumed by the wealthy in the days of the Roman Empire. Wilhelm Adolf Becker states that the emperor Augustus consumed pies that contained chicken, pheasants, pigeon, and duck.
In the Middle Ages, "bake mete" described a pie in which meat or fish is baked with fruit, spices, etc. The meats and sauces were placed in a tough and inedible pastry shell, or "coffin" with a lid sealed on, then baked. There was no pan: the pie shell itself acted as the container. Frequently the pastry was considered superfluous and was discarded. The process of raising the sides of the pie to form a strong protective crust is described in old cookery books as "raising the coffin". The term "mete" referred to the pie, not the meat: a 15th-century cookbook gives a bake mete recipe for a pear custard pie.
Describing the franklin in the 14th-century classic The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer said: "Withoute bake mete was nevere his hous, Of fissh and flessh, and that so plentvous". The best meat might be reserved for the wealthy, while their servants ate inferior pies made of the left-over "umbles" – liver, heart, tripes, and other offal, hence the term "eating humble pie".
In medieval times, birds that might be found in a game pie included heron, crane, crow, swan, stork, cormorant, and bittern as well as smaller birds trapped by nets such as thrushes, starlings, and blackbirds. The 15th-century cookery book Un Vyaunde furnez sanz nom de chare describes a croustade of veal, herbs, dates, and eggs baked in a coffin, but other sources describe croustades of chicken and pigeon. Birds were often placed on top of game pies as ornaments, or 'subtelties', a practice that continued into the Victorian age. An 1890s edition of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management shows a game pie topped by a stuffed pheasant.
Through most of the period of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, roughly from 1500 to 1685, it was common for the rulers and their courtiers to stage elaborate feasts where the attraction was as much the entertainment provided by musicians, comedians, jugglers and acrobats as the food itself. Sometimes the two were combined. Around 1630, at a dinner attended by Charles I, a huge game pie was placed on the table. But when the crust was removed, a dwarf armed with sword and buckler sprang from the coffin. On another occasion, the king was served a surprise pie containing live birds, perhaps the origin of the rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence".
The game pies of that period were sweeter than in later times, often containing fruit as well as meat, game and spices. The Tudor Christmas Pie was a rich pie of traditional birds such as partridge, chicken and goose with a recent addition, the turkey, which had been introduced to England from the New World in 1523. Game pie was not restricted to the rich. Until the 1816 Gaming act, country people had the right to catch small game such as rabbits and pigeons to supplement their diet. More valuable game were reserved for the rich, but perhaps not entirely successfully. Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor alludes to a Venison pasty made from "ill-killed" deer.
In 1653, François Pierre La Varenne published his groundbreaking work Le Pâtissier françois. On the frontispiece, is a country kitchen where the cook is making a game pie surrounded by the dead game that would have been included. The Oreiller de la Belle Aurore is an elaborate game pie named after Claudine-Aurore Récamier, the mother of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The large square pie, which was one of her son's favorite dishes, contains a variety of game birds and their livers, veal, pork, truffles, aspic, and much else, in puff pastry. It is described in the classic encyclopedia of gastronomy, the Larousse Gastronomique.
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Game pie
Game pie is a form of meat pie featuring game. The dish dates from Roman times when the main ingredients were wild birds and animals such as partridge, pheasant, deer, and hare. The pies reached their most elaborate form in Victorian England, with complex recipes and specialized moulds and serving dishes. Modern versions are simpler but savoury combinations of rabbit, venison, pigeon, pheasant, and other commercially available game.
Game pies were consumed by the wealthy in the days of the Roman Empire. Wilhelm Adolf Becker states that the emperor Augustus consumed pies that contained chicken, pheasants, pigeon, and duck.
In the Middle Ages, "bake mete" described a pie in which meat or fish is baked with fruit, spices, etc. The meats and sauces were placed in a tough and inedible pastry shell, or "coffin" with a lid sealed on, then baked. There was no pan: the pie shell itself acted as the container. Frequently the pastry was considered superfluous and was discarded. The process of raising the sides of the pie to form a strong protective crust is described in old cookery books as "raising the coffin". The term "mete" referred to the pie, not the meat: a 15th-century cookbook gives a bake mete recipe for a pear custard pie.
Describing the franklin in the 14th-century classic The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer said: "Withoute bake mete was nevere his hous, Of fissh and flessh, and that so plentvous". The best meat might be reserved for the wealthy, while their servants ate inferior pies made of the left-over "umbles" – liver, heart, tripes, and other offal, hence the term "eating humble pie".
In medieval times, birds that might be found in a game pie included heron, crane, crow, swan, stork, cormorant, and bittern as well as smaller birds trapped by nets such as thrushes, starlings, and blackbirds. The 15th-century cookery book Un Vyaunde furnez sanz nom de chare describes a croustade of veal, herbs, dates, and eggs baked in a coffin, but other sources describe croustades of chicken and pigeon. Birds were often placed on top of game pies as ornaments, or 'subtelties', a practice that continued into the Victorian age. An 1890s edition of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management shows a game pie topped by a stuffed pheasant.
Through most of the period of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, roughly from 1500 to 1685, it was common for the rulers and their courtiers to stage elaborate feasts where the attraction was as much the entertainment provided by musicians, comedians, jugglers and acrobats as the food itself. Sometimes the two were combined. Around 1630, at a dinner attended by Charles I, a huge game pie was placed on the table. But when the crust was removed, a dwarf armed with sword and buckler sprang from the coffin. On another occasion, the king was served a surprise pie containing live birds, perhaps the origin of the rhyme "Sing a Song of Sixpence".
The game pies of that period were sweeter than in later times, often containing fruit as well as meat, game and spices. The Tudor Christmas Pie was a rich pie of traditional birds such as partridge, chicken and goose with a recent addition, the turkey, which had been introduced to England from the New World in 1523. Game pie was not restricted to the rich. Until the 1816 Gaming act, country people had the right to catch small game such as rabbits and pigeons to supplement their diet. More valuable game were reserved for the rich, but perhaps not entirely successfully. Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor alludes to a Venison pasty made from "ill-killed" deer.
In 1653, François Pierre La Varenne published his groundbreaking work Le Pâtissier françois. On the frontispiece, is a country kitchen where the cook is making a game pie surrounded by the dead game that would have been included. The Oreiller de la Belle Aurore is an elaborate game pie named after Claudine-Aurore Récamier, the mother of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. The large square pie, which was one of her son's favorite dishes, contains a variety of game birds and their livers, veal, pork, truffles, aspic, and much else, in puff pastry. It is described in the classic encyclopedia of gastronomy, the Larousse Gastronomique.