As the sandwich celebrates its 250th birthday this calendar year, you may have been listening to trivia about its origin. Legend has it that the Earl of Sandwich, an avid card player, wanted an easy way to have some thing to consume with no having to set his playing cards down. He asked for a piece of beef in between two parts of bread, and the “sandwich” was born. In don pie to our analysis, it was a similar desire to eat a filling lunch effortlessly, with out employing cutlery, which may have led to the origin of the hen pot pie.

The Cornish Pasty – Mother or father to the Pot Pie?

One of the earliest and most common versions of a rooster pie hails from Cornwall in Fantastic Britain. To this day it is referred to as a Cornish “pasty,” and appears far more similar to an Italian calzone, encased in a thick, shut crust. As opposed to a calzone or much more modern variants on the pasty, it is loaded with savory meat, greens and spices but no sauce or gravy as that would make it as well messy to try to eat by hand. Pasties were a quite well-known lunch with Cornish miners, since they continue to be heat for a lengthy time in a lunch pail and are straightforward to reheat by positioning on a shovel and holding more than a flame. Pasties also need no cutlery to try to eat, and could be held by their thick crusts by miners with soiled fingers who would discard the crust right after consuming the rest. Today, pasties are Cornwall’s national dish and account for six% of the meals economic system.

While the elements of any savory meat pie have been accessible for centuries in numerous countries, there are references in cookbooks from France courting back to the 1300s. Pasties are also referred to in correspondence related to large rating officials, the clergy, and royalty of the 1200s. It may not have been till the seventeenth and 18th centuries, even so, that pasties turned frequent fare amongst the operating course. With this sort of an important place in Cornish lore and as a “national dish” of Cornwall, the neighboring county of Devon occasionally competes for a position in pasty history.

Cornish Miners Just take the Recipe on the Street

As tin mining was on the decline in Cornwall, the miners traveled for perform to other parts of the world in the 1800s, and introduced their hearty lunch recipe with them. They settled in regions this kind of as Australia, Mexico, the mid-western United States, and Pennsylvania. Whilst these regions are even now taking in the pasty in a far more genuine sort, some locations have accomplished absent with the more utilitarian attributes, like the thick crust and absence of sauce.

Present day “Pot” Pies

The original savory pie makers of Europe would use a pot, and incorporate a prime and bottom crust to support the pie maintain its form. Some American variants in excess of the several years have carried out away with the bottom crust as it was no longer considered needed to eat this dish “on the fly” without having cutlery. A far more casserole-like dish which features a generous filling, which includes gravy, has become far more common. Also, the “pot” pie is typically connected with greens in addition to rooster meat.

Although the recipe and “use” could have modified more than the a long time, rooster pies are nevertheless seen as a wholesome, stick-to-your ribs meal for the conclude of a long work working day. Also, as fans know, similar to Cornish pasties, chicken pot pies are a single of the handful of principal classes that will even now be warm when you go back for seconds!