The British Pie Week 2021 takes place every year on the first full week of March. Unsurprisingly, Jus-Rol (the pastry manufacturers}, began the event back in 2007 as a marketing initiative to promote pies.
Undoubtedly, we are a proud nation of pie lovers. This is a brilliant week of awareness to get behind pies and show our love. It can also be a perfect way to get all the family interested in cooking.
For example, there are hundreds of mouth-watering pies available, from the traditional to the ultra-modern. Ultimately it’s up to you to decide what kind of pie lover you are. Whether you’re in the mood for a tasty pie, a dessert, a crumble, a pasty pie or a pizza pie, there is something for everything.
Importantly, you can now legitimately have a whole week of fun trying to make them. What’s more, you get to eat them all too!
Where do pies come from originally?
Interestingly, the concept of ‘pie’ has been around with the ancient Egyptians. Some believe the first pies were early Roman. They may have heard about them on the Mediterranean grapevine from the Greeks. At the time, the sole purpose was to preserving the filling and not for eating.
On the other hand, some historians think that the Greeks were probably the roots of pie pastry. During this time, pies were flour-water paste wrapped around the meat. This method allowed the meat to cook and the juices sealed inside. The Romans, tasting the delicacy, took home the ingredients to produce it. This would have been a prize of victory when they conquered Greece. Forget eyes on the prize, more like ‘eyes on the pies’!
Either way, the Romans must have enjoyed them so much, they started to tell their friends. There is evidence to support the spreading of the word. Specifically, the Oxford English Dictionary states that the word pie was a common word in the 14th century. Apparently, the very first pie recipe was Roman. It was for rye-crusted goat cheese and honey pie. Sounds…interesting!
What are the most popular pies in the UK?
We’ve been searching the internet, all in the spirit of science, to find Britain’s favourite pies.
According to the most popular internet search results, these are what pie recipes Britons are looking at:
- 1: Cottage Pie
- 2: Shepherd’s Pie
- 3: Fish Pie
- 4: Chicken & Leek Pie
- 5: Chicken and Mushroom Pie
- 6: Steak and Ale Pie
- 7: Meat and Potato Pie
- 8: Pork Pie
- 9: Steak and Kidney Pie
- 10: Corned Beef Pie
Cottage and Shepherd’s Pie come in joint first place, interestingly with the same volume of web searches each. On average, every month, there are 135,000 searches for these two pies. Behind, in second place, is the classic Fish Pie, with 90,500 searches.
What will we be eating this week?
Finally, in our house we will be celebrating British Pie Week 2021 with two of our favourite shortcrust pies. These are Chicken and Ham Pie and Beef and Guinness Pie. These are firm favourites in our house. Alternatively, if we want slightly fewer calories (!) we’ll just do a shortcrust top rather than a completely-encased pie. That said, in honour of British Pie Week we’d probably be doing a disservice if we didn’t go the whole hog!
