Pies, Plots, and Pastry Crimes: The Juicy History of Medieval Pies

I’m a sucker for a good pie, especially meat pies. One of the things I miss most about living in France is the lack of a good steak and ale pie. However, if I took a quick trip back in time to the Middle Ages, I’d have been in my element. A quick Google search on the history of medieval pies told me so.

When most people picture medieval food, they jump straight to turkey legs and goblets of wine. Pies were a staple in medieval kitchens. The pastry shell, known as a coffyn, acted more like a storage container than something you ate, as it was thick, tough, and often completely inedible. Its job was to keep the contents safe from rot, rats, and sometimes, prying eyes.

But pies weren’t just for food. You could bake a bird in them. You could smuggle a message in them. In the right hands, a pie could be lunch, a letter, or something else entirely. It was drama, deception, and survival all wrapped in a crust.

The History of Medieval Pies and Where They Came From

Long before they showed up in medieval kitchens, pies had already been doing the rounds. The ancient Egyptians were some of the earliest known pie-makers, although their idea of pie was closer to a flat cake stuffed with honey or dates. Nothing fancy, and definitely no steak involved. The Greeks took things up a notch, adding pastry to meat and seafood, but it was the Romans who were the first to start wrapping meat in dough and calling it dinner.

Roman pies were often served cold, sliced like a loaf, and packed with whatever was on hand. When the Romans marched across Europe, they brought their pie habit with them, along with roads, baths, and a fondness for fermented fish sauce.

Over time, the idea stuck. In early medieval England, pies had become a regular feature at both feasts and farmhouses, though what went in them varied wildly depending on where you lived and how much you could afford. The basic idea stayed the same: fill it, seal it, bake it, and hope for the best.

What Was Actually in a Medieval Pie?

A pie could be filled with just about anything. Meat was common, but not the kind you might be craving. We’re talking pigeon, eel, rabbit, offal, or scraps from last week’s roast. In wealthier households, pies might contain swan, peacock, or a mix of minced meats, eggs, and spices. Sometimes sweet ingredients were thrown in too, like dates or currants, but rarely on their own. Sugar was expensive, and dessert wasn’t really its own thing yet. It was all just… food.

Spices like saffron, cloves, and cinnamon were used more for status than flavor. If your pie was heavily spiced, it said more about your purse than your palate. If it was bland, you probably couldn’t afford the show.

Fish pies were everywhere, thanks to Church rules banning meat on certain days. That included pickled herring, salt cod, or eels slithering in under the crust. Not exactly coastal cuisine, but it filled the gap.

One of the oldest known English cookbooks, The Forme of Cury, written by the cooks of King Richard II in the late 1300s, includes a pie recipe called “Tartes of Flesh.” Despite the dodgy sounding name, it was essentially a minced meat pie with pork, cheese, eggs, and dried fruit. The instructions? 

“Take pork ysode and grynde it smale. Take eyren and chese, and do therto. Colour it with safroun, and do it in a coffyn, and bake it well, and serve it forth.”

The Forme of Curry

In modern English: boil pork, grind it up, mix in eggs and cheese, add saffron for color, stuff it in a crust, and bake. No mention of seasoning, no measurements, and definitely no cooking times. You were expected to know when a pie was done. Or you just guessed and hoped for the best.

The Pie: Medieval Lunchbox and Long-Term Storage

There were no refrigerators in medieval times, so how did you stop pies from going off? The pastry. It was tough, dry, and often made without fat, so it could sit out for days, sometimes weeks, without collapsing. It worked like a medieval Tupperware. 

Once the filling was in, the pie was sealed up, baked solid, and then often topped off with a layer of fat or butter. This blocked out the air and helped keep the contents from going off too quickly. And it worked, really well.

A properly sealed pie could be taken on a journey, stored in a cellar, or sent off as a gift. Some even arrived at their destination still edible. In a world where salt and smoke were the usual methods for keeping meat from spoiling, a pie was a surprisingly effective bit of food tech.

Things That Definitely Shouldn’t Be in a Pie

As useful as pies were for feeding people, they were just as handy for fooling them.

There are actual records of pies being used to smuggle messages. In times of war, rebellion, or royal intrigue, a pie could get past a gatekeeper more easily than a scroll. Tucked inside a solid crust, notes could travel undetected, just one more delivery from the kitchen. 

And then there were the birds.

Most people have heard of blackbirds baked into a pie thanks to the old nursery rhyme. It sounds ridiculous, and to be fair, it was. But it wasn’t exactly a joke. There are reports of pies being served with live birds hidden inside, not baked, but slipped in after cooking. The pie would be presented at the table, the crust lifted, and a handful of confused and probably furious birds would fly out. 

When Pies Were a Status Symbol

You could tell a lot about someone in the Middle Ages by their pie. At the top of the table, pies were extravagant showpieces. Rich people wanted a performance. That meant pastries stuffed with whole birds, sometimes still in their feathers, or layered with different meats and sculpted into elaborate shapes. Some were even decorated with gold leaf. 

But no noble was elbow-deep in flour. These pies were made by teams of kitchen workers who knew their craft inside and out. Making a pie took time, strength, and skill to grind the meat by hand, render the fat, knead the pastry, and bake it all in a wood-fired oven with no thermostat..

Down the ladder, things looked very different.

For the average villager, a pie was a way to stretch whatever you had: turnips, onions, bits of lard, yesterday’s stew. If you were lucky, there might be a bone to boil or some scraps from a neighbor. Pastry was rarely made with butter or eggs. Just flour and water, enough to hold things together and keep the dirt out. 

Food in the Middle Ages marked your place in the world. The nobility dined on symbolism and spectacle. The poor cooked to survive. And in both cases, the pie told the story.

From the Table to the Stage

If invited to a medieval banquet, you came for the show; sometimes, the show came out of a pie. The pie often stole the spotlight in castle grand halls lit by candlelight and echoing with the clatter of trenchers. These weren’t your average meat-and-gravy jobs. These were oversized, elaborately shaped creations wheeled in with ceremony.

There are records of pies being used to deliver live entertainment straight to the table. One famously over-the-top feast in the 16th century featured a pie that opened to reveal a group of musicians, instruments in hand, who promptly stood up and played. At another, a jester popped out mid-course. Nothing says “appetite booster” like a sweaty man in bells leaping out of your dinner.

It became part of the performance, designed to dazzle guests. Servants and cooks had to coordinate the timing so that the surprise, whether bird, bard, or boy, didn’t get roasted along with the beef.

And yes, that old rhyme “Sing a Song of Sixpence” probably has roots in this strange tradition. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie might sound like nonsense, but it’s likely a nod to these very real banquets, where live birds were slipped into pies just before serving. The crust was lifted, the birds flew out, and everyone clapped while pretending not to flinch.

For the guests, it was all spectacle. For the kitchen staff? It was choreography with poultry.

Would You Eat a Medieval Pie Today?

If someone handed me a 14th-century pie right now, I’d have questions. A lot of them.

I might give the pork and cheese combo from The Forme of Cury a cautious go. With enough wine, maybe even enjoy it. A well-spiced meat pie? Sure, I could be persuaded. But the fish ones? The ones with eel, herring, or anything that smells like it came out of a medieval river? That’s a firm no.

And let’s be honest, I’m not cracking open a pie to find a live bird, a message, or a miniature bard. I don’t need my dinner to chirp, plot, or recite poetry. So would I eat a medieval pie? Maybe. Would I survive one? That’s another story.