Pie

A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts (pecan pie), fruit preserves (jam tart), brown sugar (sugar pie), sweetened vegetables (rhubarb pie), or with thicker fillings based on eggs and dairy (as in custard pie and cream pie). Savoury pies may be filled with meat (as in a steak pie or a Jamaican patty), eggs and cheese (such as quiches or British flans) or a mixture of meat and vegetables (pot pie).

Pies are defined by their crusts. A filled pie (also single-crust or bottom-crust), has pastry lining the baking dish, and the filling is placed on top of the pastry but left open. A top-crust pie has the filling in the bottom of the dish and is covered with a pastry or other covering before baking. A two-crust pie has the filling completely enclosed in the pastry shell. Shortcrust pastry is a typical kind of pastry used for pie crusts, but many things can be used, including baking powder biscuits, mashed potatoes, and crumbs.

Pies can be a variety of sizes, ranging from bite-size to those designed for multiple servings.

The first known use of the word 'pie' appears in 1303 in the expense accounts of the Bolton Priory in Yorkshire. However, the Oxford English Dictionary is uncertain to its origin and says 'no further related word is known outside English'. A possible origin is that the word 'pie' is connected with a word used in farming to indicate 'a collection of things made into a heap', for example a heap of potatoes covered with earth.

One source of the word "pie" may be the magpie, a "bird known for collecting odds and ends in its nest"; the connection could be that Medieval pies also contained many different animal meats, including chickens, crows, pigeons and rabbits. One 1450 recipe for "grete pyes" that might support the "magpie" etymology contained what Charles Perry called "odds and ends", including: "...beef, beef suet, capons, hens, both mallard and teal ducks, rabbits, woodcocks and large birds such as herons and storks, plus beef marrow, hard-cooked egg yolks, dates, raisins and prunes."

Early pies were in the form of flat, round or freeform crusty cakes called galettes consisting of a crust of ground oats, wheat, rye, or barley containing honey inside. These galettes developed into a form of early sweet pastry or desserts, evidence of which can be found on the tomb walls of the Pharaoh Ramesses II, who ruled from 1304 to 1237 BC, located in the Valley of the Kings. Sometime before 2000 BC, a recipe for chicken pie was written on a tablet in Sumer.

The Romans made a plain pastry of flour, oil, and water to cover meats and fowls which were baked, thus keeping in the juices. The Roman approach of covering "...birds or hams with dough" has been called more of an attempt to prevent the meat from drying out during baking than an actual pie in the modern sense. The covering was not meant to be eaten. It filled the role of what was later called puff paste. A richer pastry, intended to be eaten, was used to make small pasties containing eggs or little birds which were among the minor items served at banquets. The first written reference to a Roman pie is for a rye dough that was filled with a mixture of goat's cheese and honey.

The 1st-century Roman cookbook Apicius makes various mentions of recipes which involve a pie case. By 160 BC, Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato (234–149 BC), who wrote De Agri Cultura, notes the recipe for the most popular pie/cake called placenta. Also called libum by the Romans, it was more like a modern-day cheesecake on a pastry base, often used as an offering to the gods. With the development of the Roman Empire and its efficient road transport, pie cooking spread throughout Europe. Wealthy Romans combined many types of meats in their pies, including mussels and other seafood. Roman pie makers generally used vegetable oils, such as olive oil, to make their dough.