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Pie

This article is about the baked goods. For the mathematical constant, see Pi. For other uses,
see Pie (disambiguation).

Pie

A slice of an apple pie

Main ingredients
Pie shell

Variations
Sweet pies, savoury pies

Cookbook: Pie Media: Pie

A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or
completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients.
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 ones designed for multiple servings.
Contents
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1History

2Regional variations

3Pie throwing

4Types
o 4.1Savory pies
o 4.2Sweet pies

5See also

6References
7Sources

8External links

History

A 19th-century pie crimper made of ivory, in the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis

The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys,
in particular at sea, was initially solved by taking live food along with a butcher or cook.
However, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small
ships, reducing the time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in
early armies adopting the style of hunter-foraging.
The introduction of the baking of processed cereals including the creation of flour, provided a
more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat brittle bread loaf of millet bread
called dhourra cake, while the Romans had a biscuit called buccellum. [1]

During the Egyptian Neolithic period or New Stone Age period, the use of stone tools shaped
by polishing or grinding, the domestication of plants and animals, the establishment of
permanent villages, and the practice of crafts such as pottery and weaving became common.
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 as a treat 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
[2]

written on a tablet in Sumer. [3]

A slice of pecan pie


Jene Genevois plum pie

A chicken pie with a traditional pie bird

Ancient Greeks are believed to have originated pie pastry. In the plays of Aristophanes (5th
century BC), there are mentions of sweetmeats including small pastries filled with fruit.
Nothing is known of the actual pastry used, but the Greeks certainly recognized the trade of
pastry-cook as distinct from that of baker. (When fat is added to a flour-water paste it
becomes a pastry.) 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 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. [4]

The 1st-century Roman cookbook Apicius makes various mentions of recipes which involve
a pie case. By 160 BC, Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato (234149 BC), who
[5]

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. [2]

Pies remained as a staple of traveling and working peoples in the colder northern European
countries, with regional variations based on both the locally grown and available meats, as
well as the locally farmed cereal crop. The Cornish pasty is an excellent adaptation of the pie
to a working man's daily food needs. [2]

Medieval cooks had restricted access to ovens due to their costs of construction and need
for abundant supplies of fuel. Pies could be easily cooked over an open fire, while partnering
with a baker allowed them to cook the filling inside their own locally defined casing. The
earliest pie-like recipes refer to coffyns (the word actually used for a basket or box), with
straight sealed sides and a top; open-top pies were referred to as traps. The resulting
hardened pastry was not necessarily eaten, its function being to contain the filling for
cooking, and to store it, though whether servants may have eaten it once their masters had
eaten the filling is impossible to prove. This may also be the reason why early recipes focus
[6]

on the filling over the surrounding case, with the partnership development leading to the use
of reusable earthenware pie cases which reduced the use of expensive flour. [7]

The first reference to "pyes" as food items appeared in England (in a Latin context) as early
as the 12th century, but no unequivocal reference to the item with which the article is
concerned is attested until the 14th century (Oxford English Dictionary sb pie). [2]

Song birds at the time were a fine delicacy and protected by Royal Law. At the coronation of
eight-year-old English King Henry VI (14221461) in 1429, "Partryche and Pecock enhackyll"
pie was served, consisting of cooked peacock mounted in its skin on a peacock-filled pie.
Cooked birds were frequently placed by European royal cooks on top of a large pie to
identify its contents, leading to its later adaptation in pre-Victorian times as a porcelain
ornament to release of steam and identify a good pie. [2]

The Pilgrim fathers and early settlers brought their pie recipes with them to America,
adapting to the ingredients and techniques available to them in the New World. Their first
pies were based on berries and fruits pointed out to them by the Native North Americans.
[2]
Pies allowed colonial cooks to stretch ingredients and also used round shallow pans to
literally "cut corners" and to create a regional variation of shallow pie.
[8]

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