British Pie Week 2025

I thought I knew pies. I grew up in pie country – the farmland of the Midwest – where pies were the preferred dessert over cakes. Homemakers had high standards and were true connoisseurs of pie crusts.

But leave it to the Brits. They claim ownership of the creation of pie, which they declare is their unique contribution to international cuisine. They’ve just celebrated British Pie Week 2025 with a UK-wide competition comprising 902 entries. How much do they like pies?  They buy millions of them every year — £1 billion worth!

No room for potatoes

As you would expect, the British are strict and particular about what constitutes a pie. They can be sweet or savory, hot or cold, fusion, vegan, vegetarian, or gluten-free, but they MUST comprise a filling totally encased in pastry and baked. That means no lattices, tarts, or casseroles with a puff pastry lid. That means no shepherd’s pie (minced lamb topped with potato), cottage pie (beef minced with potato topping), or fish pie topped with potatoes.

And as you can imagine, Brits are not necessarily focused on apple pie, that distinctly American dessert. Rather, they assert that the Pilgrim fathers (and mothers) merely exported the recipe from Old Blighty, where apples at the time were called pippins and apple pies were pippin pies. (Chaucer even wrote a recipe for a pippin pie in Old English back in 1381.) As for the savory pies that were celebrated during Pie Week, the British claim that even though the Egyptians and Romans might have had something similar to today’s Welsh and Cornish pasties, it was the noble British who really brought forth these savory meals back in the Middle Ages.

Coffyns and flampoyntes

The first British cookbook written for the chefs of King Richard II called The Forme of Cury (“cuire” being the French word to cook) had numerous recipes for pies, which were known as coffyns at the time. Indeed, one of them instructed the chefs how to make flampoyntes, a pork and cheese pie decorated with pastry triangles. Pie pastry at the time was a thick paste made of flour and water (hence the name). The pastry covered meat and vegetables often baked together in an oven. Once baked, the contents were served in a dish and the pastry case thrown away. To preserve pies for later consumption before refrigeration, the gravy from the meat and vegetables would be drained and eaten with bread, while clarified butter would be poured through the drain hole to seal the pie. Once chefs discovered hot-water crusts, however, pies became the center of a banquet.

Humble pie

At the hierarchical dining tables of the Middle Ages, the lord and other high-ranking guests would be served the prime cuts of meat such as venison. As for the lower orders and serfs sitting on back-of-the-room benches, they would be served the entrails cooked with vegetables in a pastry. And since venison offal was called humble, the dish became known as humble pie. As spices and ovens became more common, pies did, as well. Pork pies (like the one pictured above) became a convenient way to use the less desirous cuts of meat from the family pig.

Elsewhere in England, regional pies developed: Cornish pasties for consumption by miners and “Stargazy Pie” in Mousehole in Cornwall that originated during a famine, when fish heads and tails were all that were available for some households to eat.  (The word “pasty” derives from the Latin word “pastata,” meaning meat wrapped in pastry.)

The winner: Boghall Butchers

As for this year’s British pie competition, the winner: “Kebab Pie” presented by Boghall Butchers of Bathgate in West Lothian, Scotland.  While I may enjoy an occasional helping of one of these British savory entrees, I think my favorite is still my mother’s cherry pie.  Old habits die hard.