Transplanting a Seattleite

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the more elaborate pastry dishes ("chastletes" and so forth -- see http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/booksforcooks/med/coffinhome/chastletes.html were made with a kind of pastry that was more architectural than tasty (kind of like today's royal icing), but the recipe referred to doesn't sound as though it was meant for that kind of dish. Figs and raisins in the filling would probably sweeten it plenty.

http://www.news.com.au/national/meat-pie-not-so-aussie-after-all/story-e6frfkvr-1225706340902 states:


The pastry, today an essential part of a good pie, was not meant to be eaten, The Courier-Mail reports.

"There were no metal baking dishes or ways to keep food fresh, so the pastry was used both as cooking container and preserver," Dr Clarkson said.

"Called a 'coffin', it was made with very hard rye flour up to seven inches thick and wrapped around the meat and baked. This could preserve meat for up to a year."

http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/piecrust.html, on the other hand, says "The current popular perception of the form of Medieval pies is that they had thick, inedible walls. I suspect that this perception was created or reinfoced by pies made in England after the 17th century. For example, the recipe for an 18th century Christmas pie states, "First make a good standing crust, let the Wall and Bottom be very thick..." (Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery)."

I've also run across descriptions of cooking a joint of meat in a hard pastry crust that was not eaten, simply there to keep in the juices. I think basically a bunch of different uses of pastry are getting completely confused.

Ha, the SCA folks weigh in: http://www.3owls.org/sca/cook/pastrycase.htm
"A great debate exists on whether or not medieval pastry was, in fact, designed to be eaten."