Since the 16th century, when they were called “pyes”, they’ve been one of the rare foods consistently popular across all classes of people. 

Food historian Ivan Day is sure that the British love of pies is a collective folk memory. “The kinds of pies that most people experience now are very similar to those that have always been sold,” he says. “In the 17th century, the River Thames sometimes froze solid. There were great fairs [held on top of the frozen river], and the most popular things to eat were hot pies – you could carry them, have a nice meal, and keep your hands warm. They are the ultimate comfort food.”

For individuals, they’re portable and cheap; for a group, they can be a statement of grandeur or generosity. And, there’s an element of surprise. You don’t know what you’re going to get until you open it up. “It could be some grisly, landfill-style meat,” Day says. “Or, there could be an entertaining joke.”

According to The Accomplisht Cook, from 1685, for a good night in, hosts should organise their kitchen to create a pastry sculpture of ships, castles and a stag pierced by an arrow. The cannons and battlements of the ship and castle can be filled with gunpowder, while the stag can be filled with red wine. Powder lit, the ship and castle will fire at each other, while a lady should be persuaded to pluck the arrow from the deer to release the wine “as blood that runneth out of a wound”. Meanwhile, small pies would have been baked then filled with live frogs and small birds, to hop across the table and flutter overhead and “cause much delight and pleasure to the whole company”. 

Chefs would create pastry cases, known as “coffins” for the fillings, sometimes huge, almost defying gravity, which after baking would be assembled and embellished with pastry sculpture. Prior to the invention of pie moulds in the 19th century, pies were hand-raised from a stiff “paste”. Queen Victoria’s traditional Yorkshire Christmas pie was so huge it needed four footmen to bear its groaning form. 

Pastry was one of the most highly regarded culinary arts (it still is today) and it was a mark of wealth in the royal palaces and homes of the very rich to have the most skilled pastry chefs on staff. Often, there’d also be a separate pie preparation area. “Pastry needs to be cold,” Day says. “Some awful cellar on the north side would have a poor old pastry chef freezing in there, well away from where the ovens were.”

In 2023, The Pie Room in the London Rosewood Hotel is all cool white marble worktops and shining copper pans. Here, chief pie maker Nokx Majozi and her team make the pies for Londoners to order and take away during the day or enjoy by night in the adjacent private, luxury Holborn Dining Room. Pies have never been out of favour in traditional British fine-dining but thanks to Majozi and her former boss, executive chef and self-described “pastry deviant” Calum Franklin, they’ve moved from being the safe choice for timid diners to hyped dish du jour.

It was a pie mould that Franklin unearthed from storage in the hotel that first set him in pursuit of pie perfection. He didn’t know what it was, and so, frustrated with a gap in his knowledge, he focused on educating himself.”

Working with pastry is not a specialisation that suits the temperament of all chefs. Precision is key. “I enjoy the discipline,” Franklin says. “Constructing a pie, you can’t cut corners – it has to be right at every stage.”

This is an excerpt from issue 4 of Swill Magazine. Grab your copy to read the whole, glorious thing.