Strange Pies

Think back to your childhood, to nursery rhymes and lullabies... now listen carefully:

Sing a song of sixpence,

A pocket full of rye;

Four-and-twenty blackbirds,

Baked in a pie.

When the pie was opened,

The birds began to sing;

Was not that a dainty dish,

To set before the king?

Sound familiar?  As a child I always used to think about how funny it would be to cut open a pie and have birds come flying out... It's absolutely ridiculous of course.  I mean, how on earth would you get live birds into a pie?!  Well guess what, it's actually entirely possible for that childhood dream to come true!  It turns out that putting live birds into a pie isn't so very difficult after all...

The first thing to remember with this trick is that the pies of the 14th-18th Century were all meat pies with fairly thick crusts that would be baked without the use of a pan of any kind.  Keeping that in mind allow me to walk you through the steps.  First of all the pie crust is crafted.  At the step where the filling would be poured in the chef instead fills the pie with flour and then puts on the lid.  The pie is then baked until the crust is its normal golden brown.  At this point the pie is taken out and a hole is cut into the bottom of it.  All of the flour is let out of this hole so that all that is left is a completely empty pie crust.  It remains like this until just before the host calls for the pie.  Just before this happens the chef will take some small live birds and carefully put them into the pie through the hole.  Once all the birds are in the chef places the pie on a platter and has it quickly delivered.  In this manner when the host cuts into the pie all of the birds come flying out!

This was a trick that was actually used to amuse guests at a banquet.  Of course, it was always very important that a second edible pie be made or else the host would be left with some very unhappy guests, but even so it is quite impressive.

There also used to be a tradition of the bride being given something called a "Bridal Pie"  the night before her wedding.  The pie would be made of many layers of pies stacked one on top of the other and sometimes within this stack would be a pie that held a snake or a toad to give the bride a bit of a surprise!

And so it is revealed that childhood nursery rhymes are not such nonsense after all.  Who knew...