Pies of Paris

These pies are based mainly on a recipe from A Noble Boke Off Cookry ffor a Prynce Houssolde, an 1882 reprint of Harlian Manuscript #4016 that was scribed shortly after 1467 (the date of one of the feasts described at the beginning of the text). But probably you don’t want to hear all that. And I’m sure that you don’t want me to include the original Middle English recipe. But if you do, look at the Documentation section at the bottom.

I actually started making these by looking for a Renaissance recipe to document making a pie like the ones Terry Bear made for SCA events. By the time I was done the recipe was a lot different from Terry’s but still mighty tasty.

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 pounds of minced and/or ground veal
4 pounds of minced pork
2 cups of beef broth
3 cups of white wine
1 cup of currants or golden raisins
1 cup of chopped dates
1/4 teaspoon saffron
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon powdered ginger
salt to taste
5 eggs
packaged pie crust from the dairy case (or make your own if you prefer)

PROCEDURE:

• In a large skillet or Dutch oven, brown all the meat together. Add 1 cup of the broth and 2 cups of the white wine and simmer over very low heat for an hour or more. Now add the dates and currants (or raisins) and cook for 15 minutes more.
• After adding the fruit, line two deep dish pie crusts with pastry.
• Remove the meat and fruit with a slotted spoon to a large ceramic dish and move away from the oven to cool.
• Add the last cup each of wine and broth, and your seasonings, to the liquid and bring just to a boil. At the same time, beat four eggs together. Dribble a cup of the hot liquid slowly into the eggs while beating continuously. Turn down your heat as low as possible and slowly pour the egg mixture into the simmering liquid while beating continuously. (These last procedures work best with two pairs of hands.) Keep stirring with a whisk until the liquid thickens well and remove from heat.
• Spoon the meat and fruit mixture back into the thickened sauce and mix well to coat. Then spoon the filling into the pie shells, being sure to use all of the sauce.
• Cover with a top crust of pastry and crimp the edges with your fingers. Beat up the last egg and brush it over the top of the crust. Use a sharp knife to cut a few small slits (for steam) in a decorative pattern in the crust.
• Bake at 350^o for thirty minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for at least 20 minutes. You can then serve the pies hot, or place them in the refrigerator to cool thoroughly.

Some Comments:
In making this at home (as opposed to for the SCA), I usually stretch the meat by adding two to three chopped apples to each pie. This mix of meat and fruit has an excellent flavor, and appeals to modern tastes more than the pie with meat alone. At least I think so.

DOCUMENTATION:

Pies of Parys
To make pyes of paris tak and fmyt fair buttes of pork and buttes of vele and put it to gedure in a faire pot with frefhe brothe and put ther to a quantite of whyne and boile it tille it be enoughe then put it in to a treene veffelle and put ther to raw yolks of eggs pouder of guinger fugur falt and mynced dates and raiffins of corans and mak a good thyn paifte and mak coffyns and put it ther in and bak it welle and ferue it.

A Boke of Kokery,  1467
from the facsimile in Duke Cariadoc's Medieval and Renaissance Cookbook Collection

Tartes of flessh
Take pork ysode and grynde it smale. Take harde eyren isode & ygrounde, and do therto with chese ygrounde. Take gode powdours and hool spices, sugar, safroun and salt, & do therto. Make a coffyn as tofore sayde & do this therinne, & plaunt it with smalle briddes istyued & connynges, & hewe hem to smale gobettes, & bake it as tofore, & serue it forth.

Forme of Cury,   1390
(as reprinted in the Early English Text Society's Curye on Inglysch)

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