Pork pie

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Pork pies are a type of meat pie and are traditional British food. They consist of roughly chopped pork and pork jelly sealed in a hot water crust pastry, and are normally eaten cold. In Yorkshire, a pork pie is occasionally referred to as a "growler".^[1]

There are two main types of pork pie generally available in commercial outlets: the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie uses uncured meat, whilst the common pie uses cured meat. This gives the meat in a Melton pie a grey colour, while commercial pies commonly have pink meat. A Melton Mowbray pie also commonly has a hand-formed crust and often looks slightly irregular in shape after baking, as with any hand-made pie.

The Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association applied for protection under the European "Protected designation of origin" laws as a result of the increasing production of Melton Mowbray style pies by large commercial companies in factories far from Melton Mowbray. This protection was granted on 4 April 2008.^[2]

Pork pie or Porkie Pie, often shortened to porky, is the Cockney rhyming slang term for lie.

Contents 1 Variations 1.1 Gala pie 1.2 Picnic pie 2 Pork pies in the United States and Canada 3 Notes 4 External links

[edit] Variations

In some cases the solid pastry top is replaced by a pastry lattice, allowing the meat filling to be seen. Some compositional variations on the pork pie theme are:

[edit] Gala pie

A common variation on the pork pie is the gala pie; a pork pie with a hard boiled egg in the centre. Gala pies are often baked in long, loaf-type tins, with multiple eggs arranged along the centre. The so called "long egg" in Gala pies is actually made of several eggs. The yolks are separated from the whites and the yolks are then poured into a long tube-shaped mold in which they are cooked. The hard yolk is removed from the mold then put inside a larger tube-shaped mold and the egg whites are poured round the outside of the hard yolk. The whole thing is then cooked again to harden the whites around the yolk. This is then removed from the mold thus producing one very long hard-boiled egg.^[3]

[edit] Picnic pie

Commonly available as smaller (3–5 cm) varieties and ideal for picnics, usually with additional ingredients added to the pork and jelly filling mixture. Fillings added to the pork include apples, pickle or bacon.

[edit] Pork pies in the United States and Canada

Pork pies have been made for over 100 years in Rhode Island and southeast Massachusetts by Hartley's Pork Pies, founded in 1900 by Thomas Hartley, an Englishman who came to the United States in the late 1800s to work in the textile mills of Fall River, Massachusetts. Their popularity with mill workers led to the rise of a Fall River slogan "city of mills, hills, and pork pies." As of 2008 they are still made and sold daily in four stores.

The more recently established Myers of Keswick in Greenwich Village, New York City also makes and sells pork pies. Frozen pork pies can be bought from the British Pantry in Aldie, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.,^[4] and the British Shoppe in Orlando, Florida.

A French-Canadian pork pie served at Christmas and New Year's is the tourtière.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• The Pork Pie Appreciation Society
• Photos showing the steps in constructing a rather large pork pie

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