Pie

The pie, to quote one Victorian writer, is ‘a great human discovery which has universal estimation among all civilized eaters’. Pie explores the development of this most esteemed article of food, from the ancient pie, its crust inedible and used for preserving the contents, to its elevation as the highest expression of culinary art. The pie symbolizes family, celebration and ritual, and appears in literature from Chaucer to Jane Austen and in art from Monet to Hogarth. It is the most adaptable of foods, portable, nutritious and tasty, and its contents vary throughout the world, from fish to meat, from sweet to savoury, to the mysterious and sinister ‘Old Maid’ or ‘Scrap’ pie. A pie can be ‘an economical investment for all miscellaneous savings’, as Dickens called it, or a momentous and expensive work of art; it can even contain nothing but live birds, frogs or dancing girls. A celebration of the pie as well as a hugely informative history, with a selection of recipes from throughout the life of the pie, Pie will satisfy the appetite of anyone interested in the history of food and cookery.