What's For Breakfast?

[DanaC]

We'd probably class that as a flan.

I went looking to see if there was a difference in the way we define pies, and apparently it's not such a simple matter. There's great debate (I know right?) amongst pie people as to what properly constitutes a pie. I stumbled across this article:

When is a pie not a pie? As British Pie Week begins, it’s a hot topic for lovers of all things pastry-encased. Pies recently hit the news when one incensed citizen launched a Government e-petition to “make wrongly describing a casserole with a pastry lid a criminal offence”. The petition currently has around 5,000 signatures, falling somewhat short of the 100K needed to be considered for a debate in Parliament. Yet, gathering by reactions the petition has had online and among pie makers, it’s clearly a topic many Brits take seriously.


So, is a true pie one which is fully covered in pastry, with a base, sides and lid? The creator of the pie-tition, one ‘Bill T Wulf’, certainly thinks so. Wulf says the Oxford English Dictionary defines a pie as “a baked dish of fruit, or meat or vegetables, typically with a top or base of pastry”. However, my Sixth edition of the OED describes a pie as “encased in or covered with pastry”. The online version of the OED says a pie “frequently also has a base and sides”. Meanwhile, according to the excellent Oxford Companion to Food, the meaning of the word pie has evolved over many centuries and varies according to both country and region.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddr...st-debate.html

My favourite bit:

O’Callaghan tells me that there’s never really been any serious debate about allowing in lattice tops, and I’m told by someone else involved in the awards that when the issue was raised a few years ago it was shouted down with cries of “we might as well let quiches in”.