Dinner Pies

Meat pies can be traced back to the Neolithic Period, around 9500 BC. Pies were eventually adopted by the Greeks, and they are the ones who started using a flour and water paste that they filled with meat. Romans continued using the technique of pies with a variety of meats as well as oysters, mussels, and fish as fillings. They also added oil to the flour and water mixture. However, this pastry was not meant to be eaten at the time and was therefore thrown away.

During the Medieval times, Northern European cooks started adding fats like lard and butter to the pastry to make a stiff dough that would hold better. These pastry dishes were called coffins (or coffyns), which meant a basket or a box. They eventually were named pyes or pies. The origin of this name can be traced to the type of meat that was commonly used as filling. Although meats such as beef, lamb, and duck were commonly used, it was most of the time magpie that was the main ingredient. In medieval English, since magpies were originally named pies, the name of these meat pastries stuck. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first written record of the word “pie” as food dates from 1303.

We owe the flakier and tastier pastry to the French and Italians who used new methods of adding butter, as well as rolling and folding the dough. It was the missionaries and explorers who helped spread the meat-based pies across the globe. The English Pilgrims brought the recipes for these pies with them to North America. The pastry top was actually used to preserve food during the long winters in America.

Although sweet pies are now probably more popular than meat-based pies, there are a number of versions of those savoury pies around the world. For instance:

• Natchitoches meat pies from Louisiana
• Empanadas in South America
• British meat pies, as well as Australia and New Zealand meat pies.
• Nigerian “meat pie”, which is similar to the Jamaican or Haitian beef patty
• In the Middle East, meat pies are called sfiha or lahm bi ajin, and they look more like a pizza topped with ground beef and spices.
• The Greek call their meat pies kreatopita. They contain ground beef, onions and feta cheese, that is wrapped in phyllo dough.
• Indians call it samosa, and may be filled with lamb or beef (in non Hindu communities)
• British pasty is a speciality from Cornwall that is prepared with meat, potatoes and rutabaga.
• Although Canadian tourtière is very similar to a standard meat pie, Canadian flipper pie, another Canadian delicacy is made with seal meat.
• The French Canadians (Québec) also make cipaille (coming from the old recipe sea-pie, which alternated seafood and meat). However, cipaille only includes different types of meat.
• The Finnish have their lihapiirakka, which is filled with ground meat and rice, before being fried.
• Scotch pie or mutton pie is a double-crust pie from Scotland, made with ground mutton.
• Another British classic is steak and kidney pie.
• And Vietnamese love their pâté chaud or bánh pa tê sô, which is typically made with ground pork or chicken wrapped in puff pastry.