This week on the Gobbet we ate some meat pie. If you would like to try this at home, here's how!
Pies containing a mix of meats, spices, dried fruits, and some kind of liquid or binder were fairly common at feasts in medieval England. They were especially popular at Christmas, and evolved into modern "mincemeat" pie (which contains no meat! ha ha!). To make a typical one, you will need:
-1.5 to 2 pounds of any mix of meats, beef, lamb, pork, game, poultry, etc. To be more authentic, cook your meat first and then chop it small; to save time, use raw ground meat.
-2 cups of mixed dried fruits, such as prunes, dates, figs, raisins, "currants" (Zante currants, which are not botanically currants but tiny dried grapes)
-2 eggs or 4 egg yolks (optional, recommended if you start with cooked meat)
-Up to a half a cup of liquid, either broth or wine
-Salt and sugar to taste (remember that sugar was used in period much like salt, a little pinch here and there to liven things up)
-Any combination of spices that pleases you. Try: pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, clove, or some of the more exotic ones like cubeb, galangal, long pepper, grains of paradise
-Crust, either a top and a bottom or just the bottom. In period this would have been made with lard, flour, and boiling water, but I have yet to master this. A simple modern recipe for a single crust is 1.5 cups of flour, 1 stick of butter, a pinch of salt, and cold water. Cut the butter into the flour and salt until the whole thing looks crumbly, then add cold water a spoonful at a time until the pastry barely forms a ball. Let it rest, then roll it out and line your pie pan.
Mix the filling well and put into the pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour (less time if you started with cooked meat, more time if you started with raw meat).
The pie I made from the show was a little different from this because I happened to have a bunch of leftover stewed prunes (2 pounds of prunes simmered in 1 bottle of red wine with 2 cinnamon sticks and half a "bear" of honey) that I wanted to use up. I used 1 pound each of ground beef and pork, nearly 3 cups of stewed prunes, and a huge assortment of spices: salt, sugar, galangal, long pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, grains of paradise, and clove. I made both a top and bottom crust and cooked the pie in a deep dish pie pan. I made it the day before the show, I think that these kinds of pies taste better after sitting a day.
Like a lot of medieval foods, there aren't a lot of hard and fast rules. Experiment and have fun!
