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T-Meat-Pies-art - 4/29/18

"Tudor Meat Pies" by Lady Ysabel de la Oya.

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Tudor Meat Pies

by Lady Ysabel de la Oya

Barony of Forgotten Sea / Shire of Cum an Iolar

How and what was eaten was dependant on class and economic status. At the lowest levels, poverty controlled what was eaten, while the middle and higher classes were controlled by a combination of economics and sumptuary laws. Of course, all classes, even royalty, were expected to follow church laws about fasting.[1]

Sumptuary laws controlled how much could be spent on food, and what foods, and how many dishes could be served. Failure to adhere to these laws could see an uppity yeoman (who holds a small estate) or low ranking gentry would face a fine.[1]

Before the Reformation, the Church banned the eating of meat during large swaths of the calendar. In addition to Lent and Advent, meat consumption was forbidden on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Allowed on most fast days, eggs were also banned during Lent. Later, the Church of England mandated fast days as well.[2] At the time, the laws of the church were taken very seriously, and anyone caught eating meat on a fast day would find themselves in legal trouble, not to mention the peril to their immortal soul.[3]

Pottage and bread made up the main diet for the poorer classes. These were often meatless due to both poverty and church law. For those who could afford it, such as the gentry classes and up, fish and other seafood would serve to replace meat during fast days.[1]

The Tudor Kitchen

The main styles of cooking in this period were boiling, roasting, and baking. Boiling was the most fuel economical and could be performed by someone with the most basic of kitchen sets ups. Most people did not have a dedicated kitchen, and a soup or a pottage would be able to have been cooked in a central hearth with cookpots that could be set in or near the fire. Frying was achieved in the same manner.[4]

Roasting was done on a spit next to the fire. This process was time, labor, and resource expensive and was much more common in the upper classes. Lower and middle classes would reserve this method for more special occasions.4 Large manor houses and palaces would have special servants who turned the spit. [5]

Baking requires an enclosed oven, which many houses didn't have. Prosperous farmhouses often had ovens, and of course, manors, estates, and castles and palaces always had them, but the country poor, and middle-class town dwellers usually did not. Communal and commercial ovens filled this gap for those who had access to them. They were a staple in towns and villages. Baked goods would have to be marked to later identify the owner after baking. [6]

To use, a fire would be built inside the brick or clay oven and then raked out when the oven had absorbed enough heat. To create steam, the inside would have been damp moped, and the items to be baked would be placed with a wood peel (think a longer handled version of a modern-day pizza peel) and the oven sealed up.[4] In order to keep as much heat in as possible, the raking and mopping would happen very quickly and the burning ashes would often be just dumped on the floor. [5] To reduce the risk of fire, ovens and bakehouses often would have been built away from the main dwellings.[4]

An oven, of a sort, could be fashioned from a covered pan or upturned cookpot that was surrounded with embers. [4]

Reconstruction of the kitchen at Hardwick Old Hall, using evidence from its 1601 inventory.[2]

A Tudor Pie

A pie often consisted of a meat, or mixture of meats, that was cooked then ground or cut up small. The meat was mixed with eggs, and fat. Flavoring such as dried fruits, spices, stocks, and wine would be added. The mixture would be surrounded by a pastry dough, called a coffin. [7]

Baker using Portable Oven.[8]

An example recipe from A Book of Cokkrye , an English cookbook from 1591.

"How to make Chuets.

Take Veale and perboyle it and chop it very fine, take beefe Suet and mince it fine, then take Prunes, Dates and Corance, wash them very clean and put them into your meat, then take Cloves, Mace, and pepper to season your meat withal and a little quantity of salt, vergious and Sugar, two ounces of biskets, and as many of Carowaies, this is the seasoning of your meat, then take fine flowre, yolkes of Egs, and butter, a little quantitye of rosewater and sugar, then make little coffins for your Chewets and let them bake a quarter of an houre, then wet them over with butter, then strewe on Sugar and wet the Sugar with a little Rosewater, and set them into the Oven again, then take and serve five in a dish." [9]

This is a veal pie, made with beef suet, prunes, dates, currants, cloves, mace, pepper, salt, verjuice, salt, bread, and caraway. It is sealed in a coffin of flour, eggs, butter, rosewater, and sugar. These are small, freestanding, hand-held pies.

Another example from 1575 is found in A Proper New Booke of Cookery.

"To make Pyes.

Pyes of Mutton or biefe, must be fine minced and seasoned with Pepper and salte, and a lyttle Saffron to colour it, suet or marrow a good quantytye a lyttle vyneger, prunes, great raisings, and dates, take the fatteste of the broth of poudred biefe, and if you will have paste royall, take butter and yolkes of egges, & so temper the flower to make the Paste." [10]

This pie is made of mutton or beef with suet and seasoned with salt, pepper, saffron, vinegar, prunes, dates, and raisins. The dough is made from broth, flour, butter, and eggs.

A recipe from 1615 for the pasty dough can be found in The English Housewife.

"On the Mixture of Pastes

To speak then of the mixture and knading of pastes, you shall understand that your rye paste would be kneaded only with hot water and a little butter, or sweet seam and rye flour very finely sifted, and it would be made tough and stiff that it may stand well in the raising, for the coffin thereof must ever be very deep; your course wheat crust would be kneaded with hot water, or mutton broth and a good store of butter, and the paste made stiff and tough because that coffin must be deep also; your fine wheat crust must be kneaded with as much butter as water, and the paste made reasonable lithe and gentle, into which you must put three or four eggs or more according to the quantity you blend together, for the will give sufficient stiffening." [11]

This is a dough made from hot water or broth, flour, butter, and eggs. This hot water crust is freestanding and should be quite stout.

The The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin, contains another hot water pastry dough.

"To make Paste, and to raise Coffins.

Take fine flower, and lay it on a boord, and take a certaine of yolkes of Egges as your quantitie of flower is, then take a certaine of Butter and water, and boil them together, but ye must take heed ye put not too many yolks of Egges, for if you doe, it will make it drie and not pleasant in eating: and yee must take heed ye put not in too much Butter for if you doe, it will make it so fine and short that you cannot raise. And this paste is good to raise all manner of Coffins: Likewise if ye bake Venison, bake it in the paste above named." [12]

Much the same as the 1615 recipe, hot water, flour, and eggs are used. While not all Tudor pies followed these patterns, many did.

Making of Flour

I purchased whole wheat berries and ground them in a spice grinder.

Next, I used a mesh colander and gave the wheat its first sieve.

My third step was the second sieving through an even finer (new) splatter screen

Lastly, I gave the wheat it's final sieve using a cheesecloth.

I did, at some points, stop and re-run my wheat through the grinder to produce more fine flour.

As I ground, the flour become finer and whiter.

From right to left: whole whole, ground, first sieve, second sieve, and third sieve (left)

In period, flour was often made from a mixture of grains such as wheat, rye, oats, and barley, and sometimes pulses such as peas, beans, and lentils would be added to grain to make bread and other baked goods. Wheat would be ground either in a hand-powered quirn or in a wind or water-powered mill between grindstones. The wheat would then be sieved. For most of society, the flour produced from the first sieving was eaten. For the upper classes, especially the nobility and royalty, several more sievings would produce finer and finer flour. [13]

My Recipe

Filling:

2 lbs of beef, cubed 250 ml red wine

2 cups water

1.5 cups duck stock

4 oz butter

8 oz pitted dates

1 tsp mace

1 tsp grains of paradise 2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp cloves

1 tsp galangal

2 eggs

1 egg (for egg wash)

Pastry Dough (three recipes):

4 oz of butter (homemade)

4 oz of duck stock

8 oz of flour

Pinch of salt

1 egg

*duck stock was given to me from a friend who made stock from duck bones.

1. Cube and boil beef in water and wine, simmer for about two hours, this can be done the night before. Chop the meat and dates finely, then mix with the stock and butter. Stir mixture very well, then add the spices and two eggs. Refrigerate mixture until ready to fill pies.

2. For the dough, boil duck stock and butter. Beat an egg, and add it to a bowl filled with the flour, off to one side. Pour hot butter/stock mixture on another side of the bowl. Stir well, then knead, adding more flour when needed. Cool for an hour.

3. Section dough into six equal balls, and trip a third of each ball off for a lid. Roll out the bottom, and form in a muffin tin and fill with meat mixture. Roll out tops. In order to attach the tops to the pies, take out of a muffin tin, wet hands, and work to seal the seams. Poke a vent hole into each pie. Glaze pies with an egg wash.

4. Bake in a 400°F oven, on a pizza stone, for 20 minutes. I baked on a pizza stone to approximate a period oven the best I could.

I constructed this pie recipe based on period methods and ingredients but tailored it to my tastes.

I chose not to trim the pies with sugar, as they most likely would have been during Elizabethan times.4 I feel the addition of dates added quite enough sweetness.

These would be served to the nobility, as they are made with fine flour and filled mostly with beef. They also contain a lot of expensive spices. These pies could have either been served as small hand pies, as I have done or as a larger pie during a multi-course meal. They would, of course, have been served on a day when meat was permitted.

I made one pastry batch with the flour that I ground myself, and one bach with store bought, unbleached flour. The meat mixture, was enough for three pastry batches, but I did not make all three batches of dough. I also baked each batch separately.

Pies with self made flour (above).

Works Cited:

1. Thomas, Melita. "Tudor Dining: a Guide to Food and Status in the 16th Century." History Extra , Tudor Times, 18 Jan. 2018, www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/tudor-dining-a-guide-to-food-and-status-in-the-16th-century/.

2. "English Heritage." Tudors: Food & Health | English Heritage, www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/story-of-england/tudors/food-and-health/.

3. Mortimer, Ian. The time traveler's guide to medieval England: a handbook for visitors to the fourteenth century. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010. Print.

4. Forgeng, Jeffrey L. Daily Life in Elizabethan England . Greenwood Press, 2010.

5. Tudor Monastery Farm: 01. Prod. David Upshal. Perf. Ruth Goodman, Peter Ginn, Tom Pinfold.

Tudor Monastery Farm, episode 1. BBC , n.d. Web. 5 Apr. 2017.

6. Goodman, Ruth. How to Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Everyday Life . Penguin Books, 2016.

7. Matterer, James L. "Basic Meat Pie." Basic Meat Pie , Gode Cookery, 1 Jan. 2000, www.godecookery.com/goderec/grec11.htm.

8. Matterer, James. "Kitchen Cooking and Equipment." A Feast For The Eyes . Gode Cookery, n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2016. <http://www.godecookery.com/afeast/kitchens/kit044.html>;.

9. W., A. A Book of Cookrye: Very Necessary for All Such as Delight Therin. Translated by Mark Waks and Jane Waks, Printed by Edward Allde, 1591.

10. Veale, Abraham. A Proper New Booke of Cookery. In Fleetstreete, by William How , 1575.

11. Markham, Gervase. The English Housewife . Printed for George Sawbridge, at the Sign of the Bible on Ludgate-Hill, 1615.

12. Peachey, Stuart, editor. The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin. Richard Jones, 1594.

13. "Medieval Flour & Pastry." OAKDEN, 31 Jan. 2012, oakden.co.uk/medieval-flour-and-pastry-article/.

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Copyright 2015 by Michelle Araj. <michellearaj at gmail.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.