Pies in England

Pies are very popular in England. Pies are a baked dish consisting of a filling such as chopped meat or fruit enclosed in or covered with pastry (a mixture of flour and butter).

Favourite meat (savoury) pies include:

Pork pie

A pork pie consists of pork and pork jelly in a hot water crust pastry and is normally eaten cold.

Steak and Kidney pie

A traditional English dish consisting of a cooked mixture of chopped beef, kidneys, onions, mushrooms and beef stock. This mixture is placed in a pie or casserole dish, covered with a pastry crust and baked until crisp and brown.

Cornish pastie / Cornish pasty

A type of pie, originating in Cornwall, South West England. It is an oven-cooked pastry case traditionally filled with diced meat - nowadays beef mince (ground beef) or steak - potato, onion and swede. It has a semicircular shape, caused by folding a circular pastry sheet over the filling. One edge is crimped to form a seal.

Cornish pasty in the days of the miners, used to be half savoury and half sweet, all wrapped in one piece of pastry. That way it was like a main course and dessert all in one.

Stargazy Pie

Herrings are cooked whole in a pie. with their heads looking skyward and tails in the middle.

Favourite fruit (sweet) pies include:

• Apple pie
• Rhubarb pie,
• Blackberry pie,
• A mixture of fruits such as apple and rhubarb or apple and blackberry.

World's Biggest Pie

Every now and then the villagers of Denby Dale, near Huddersfield, Yorkshire bake the world's biggest meat and potato pie

The first recorded making of a pie in the village was in 1788 to celebrate the recovery of King George III from mental illness. Since that time nine other pies have been baked, usually to coincide with a special event or to raise money for a local cause.

The pie dish in the year 2000 weighed 12 tonnes and was 40ft long, 8ft wide and 3ft 8in deep, and the pie itself contained three tonnes of beef, half a tonne of potatoes and 22 gallons of John Snith's Best Bitter. It was transported into Pie Field on a 70ft waggon - and blessed by the Bishop of Wakefield.