Page 12 - Pie It Forward: Pies, Tarts, Tortes, Galettes, and Other Pastries Reinvented
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very early on served as a vessel alone and wasn’t
exactly edible. It was thick walled, inches wide
even, and was constructed from a flour-and-water
paste not unlike Play-Doh . . . just not as tasty.
Crusts had to be dense and damn hard to
withstand hours, maybe days, of cooking. They
needed to be sturdy because they were made for
storage. Fittingly, those inedibly crusted pies with
tops and bottoms were once called “coffyns,”
while those with just a bottom crust were named
“traps.” There were no pie dishes; the crust was
the dish and probably tasted just as good as a
hearty bite of Pyrex. Consider yourself lucky that
some glorious baker thought to make the crust
edible by adding a generous dose of fat.
READER: Four-and-twenty blackbirds? Singing?
Really?
