A Slice Of Pork Pie
A staple of the picnic hamper, a satisfying meal on its own, portable, and a perfect accompaniment to a salad, the pork pie is firmly established as one of Britain’s favourite pies. We spend more than £165 million a year on them, according to Kantar Worldpanel. Familiar fare it might be, but the pork pie had a long, fascinating and, at times, contentious history.
An early version of the pork pie appears in De Re Coquinaria, a collection of recipes attributed to Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmand living in the first century AD. The ham was boiled with dried figs and three bay leaves. After removing the skin, making diagonal incisions into the meat, and pouring honey over it, it was wrapped in a dough made from oil and flour and served when the dough was cooked (Book VII, IX).
Our forefathers in the Middle Ages were pie enthusiasts. Ominously, pies were known as “cofyns”, a term probably derived from the coffin-like casement of pastry complete with lid, but also, surely, a knowing acknowledgement that what was inside was not always of the finest quality. The Forme of Cury (1390) contains a recipe for mylates of pork (XX.VII.XV), a quasi-pork pie with elements of a quiche. The pork was ground, “hewe pork al to pecys”, and mixed with cheese and eggs and seasoned with spices and saffron, cheese and eggs, and then cooked in a pastry shell.
It took such a long time to cook the dish that the pastry crusts were rock hard, leading some to wonder whether they were discarded rather than eaten. So integral, though, were they to the recipe that it would seem strange to throw them away. Hannah Glasse’s influential The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), a compendium of 942 recipes, included one for the Cheshire pork pie, a rich and slightly sickly concoction of layers of pork loin and apple, sweetened with sugar and mixed with half a pint of white wine.
Whether this pork pie was a delicacy particular to Cheshire is not clear, but the Melton Mowbray pork pie is incontrovertibly associated with the Leicestershire town. Indeed, on April 4, 2008, it was awarded “protected designation of origin” (PDO) status by the European Commission, since converted, post Brexit, to “Designated Origin UK Protected” or “GI, Geographical Interest” mark. What this means is that only pies made within a designated zone around Melton, roughly ten miles in radius, and in accordance with the town’s traditional recipe can carry the Melton Mowbray name on their packaging.
Grey meat seasoned with salt and pepper, succulent jelly, and bowed walls are the hallmark of a Melton Mowbray pork pie. The meat used is fresh and uncured, which gives it its distinctive grey colouration, in contrast to pork pies made from cured pork, where the meat is pink. The hot water crust pastry is hand-raised which means that the warm dough is kneaded slightly until it is soft and smooth, then fitted around a bottle or wooden dolly, and “raised” by hand, starting from the base, and drawing it upwards to form the walls.
The course chopped pork, seasoned with a little salt and pepper, would then be put into the casing, sealed, and baked in the oven. Made originally without the use of baking hoops, the unsupported pie would sink and bow in the oven, giving it its distinctive shape. Whilst still hot, bone stock jelly was piped in to fill the airspaces within the pie to preserve the meat inside longer, sterilise the contents and give it more solidity, thus reducing the risk of it crumbling when carried.
