Pies of the imagination

The life of pie!

Andrew Stephens on Janet Clarkson's Pie: A Global History:

There were those filled with living, affrighted birds (and, presumably, their droppings) — and those stuffed with vast quantities of dead ones (such as pigeon pie, with the birdies' feet poking dolefully out the top). Indeed, where there is a pastry case and a filling — Clarkson debates the finer points of this structure — there is bound to be a pie.

Take the pie whipped up by a Mrs Kirk at the Old Ship Inn in 1835. It weighed 108 kilos and held within its sturdy pastry walls "one rump of beef, two legs of veal, two legs of pork, three hares, three couple of rabbit, three geese, two brace of pheasants, four brace of partridges, two turkeys, two couple of fowls" and loads of flour.

Or there is the daunting 17th-century "bride pie", several distinct pies constructed upon one bottom, that housed "beautiful little things" such as cocks' combs, lambs' testicles and goose giblets, as well as oysters, marrow, interlarded bacon, live birds (or a snake), plus many minced larks.