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Pie

We have dealt with a considerable number of words belonging to the French table, the origin of which is frankly stated by the French authorities to be unknown. We have now to do with a word peculiar to the English table, which, although the subject of many conjectures, has never yet been satisfactorily explained. The most authori- - Pie There tative explanation is very curious. It was suggested by the lexicographer Junius, more than two centuries ago; and it holds its ground among the very valuable etymologies in Webster's dictionary for which Dr. Mahn is responsible. Junius put it forth only as a conjecture that pie or pye is a corruption of pastie or pastye; but Mahn states it as a fact. Now, the fact is that pasty or pasté, as used in mediæval English and French, is a later word than pie; and therefore pie could not well be contracted from it, even if it were a likely form of contraction. It is odd that this explanation should still hold its ground, seeing that a very little inquiry into the history of food would have suggested two other etymologies, either of which might singly account for the word pie, though I believe that both have contributed to it. In Le Grand d'Aussy's work on the history of private life in France, it is stated that the word pain signified a pie before the word pâté came into use. is a very probable etymology at once. If any Englishman should have the audacity to call out in a French restaurant, with a thoroughly English pronunciation, "Pie!". of Thackeray's snobs was heard to call out "Oh!"-then the waiter would as surely bring him bread as the snob got water. There may be English people who cannot dissociate in their minds the pie from the pie-dish, and may therefore find it difficult to understand how a pie should have ever been considered as a pain-a loaf. They must get rid of that idea, and think of the pie as originally made-what we now call a raised pie-all surrounded with crust, like a pain or loaf. But the two words pain and pie in this sense fared very differently in France and in England. The former was ambiguous-meaning to the French ear a loaf as well as meat baked in a crust. When, therefore, the word pasté or pâté found its way into France from Italy, it very quickly supplanted the word pain in the latter sense, which completely disappeared. But the parallel word pie in England had no such ambiguity to contend -as one Pig with; it had one plain meaning, all its own; and it held its own even after the word pasty came into fashion by the side of it. This was due not merely to its own force, but to the fact that there was another word pie which came to help it out. From the beginning until now it has always been most common for the pie to encase a bird or birds of some sort. Now in France one of the most frequent names for a bird to be eaten was pied-a foot. Cotgrave, whose dictionary is of the highest authority, notes a proverbial phrase,-" à l'avocat le pied en main," and explains it as applying to "partridges, pheasants, capons, etc., wherewith they (that is, the advocates) look to be now and then presented." To this day it is common enough in France to speak of the smaller birds intended for the table as les petits pieds. But the English form and spelling of pied was pie-you have it in cap-à-pie. There appears, therefore, to have been a blending of names-two pies-the one from pain, denoting more immediately the crust, the other from pied, denoting more immediately the contents of the pie, and both combining to establish the name in opposition to the newly introduced one of pasty. To this day on the top of a pigeon pie there is, in allusion to the name, a show made of the feet'; and in some parts of England an apple pie is called an apple foot. If the reader asks, In what parts of England? I cannot answer; but I can give my authority, -namely, Todd in his edition of Johnson's dictionary. As for the making of pies, the receipts for the various crusts will be found under the name of Paste; and those for the contents-as Apple, Eel, Pigeon-under the head of each.

PIG is a name reserved for sucking-pig. The gluttonous creature of the sty is concealed under the name of pork. It is difficult to wax eloquent on pork; but listen to Charles Lamb on the sucking-pig :- "Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edibilis," he Pig says, "I will maintain it to be the most delicate-princeps obsoniorum. "I speak not of your grown porkers-things between pig and pork-those hobbydehoys; but a young and tender suckling, under a moon old, guiltless as yet of the sty, with no original speck of the amor immunditiæ, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet manifest-his voice as yet not broken, but something between a childish treble and a grumble-the mild forerunner or præludium of a grunt. "He must be roasted. I am not ignorant that our ancestors ate them seethed, or boiled-but what a sacrifice of the exterior tegument! "There is no flavour comparable, I will contend, to that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over-roasted, 'crackling, as it is well called; the very teeth are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance, with the adhesive oleaginous-O call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to itthe tender blossoming of fat-fat cropped in the bud, taken in the shoot, in the first innocence the cream and quintessence of the child-pig's yet pure food: the lean, no lean, but a kind of animal manna, or rather, fat and lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into each other, that both together make but one ambrosian result or common substance. "Behold him, while he is 'doing': it seemeth rather a refreshing warmth than a scorching heat that he is so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the string! Now he is just done. To see the extreme sensibility of that tender age! - he hath wept out his pretty eyesradiant jellies, shooting stars! "See him in the dish, his second cradle: how meek he lieth! Wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal, Pig wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation. From these sins he is happily snatched away:

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with timely care.

His memory is odoriferous; no clown curseth, while his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon; no coalheaver bolteth him in reeking sausages; he hath a fair sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epicure-and for such a tomb might be content to die. "Unlike to mankind's mixed characters-a bundle of virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to be unravelled without hazard-he is good throughout. No part of him is better or worse than another. He helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. He is the least envious of banquets; he is all neighbours' fare. ... "I am one of those who freely and ungrudgingly impart a share of the good things of this life which fall to their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. But a stop must be put somewhere. One would not, like Lear, 'give everything.' I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingratitude to the Giver of all good flavours to extra-domiciliate, or send out of the house slightingly (under pretext of friendship, or I know not what), a blessing so particularly adapted-predestined, I may say, to my individual palate. It argues an insensibility. friendship "Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacrificing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to death with something of a shock, as we hear of any other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical light merely) what effect this process might have towards intenerating and dulcifying a substance naturally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, while we condemn the inhumanity, Pigeon how we censure the wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto. "I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and maintained with much learning and pleasantry on both sides, 'Whether, supposing that the flavour of a pig who obtained his death by whipping (per flagellationem extremam) superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a man more intense than any possible suffering we can conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that method of putting the animal to death?" I forget the decision. "His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few breadcrumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic-you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than they are: but consider, he is a weakling-a flower."

All honour to Charles Lamb! but still the innocent is to be stuffed with the ordinary sage-and-onion forcemeat (No. 7), and is then to be sewed up and roasted before a brisk fire; the basting to be frequent, with a brush dipped in salad oil. He is to be served with a good brown gravy and with apple sauce. He had better be served whole; but those who are not confident of their carving require that (as Grimod de la Reynière said) he should first be made a gentleman-that is, be guillotined-and that he should be halved down the back. In this case, let the halves be placed on the dish, the outer or roasted sides uppermost; and let the head also be halved-the one cheek to repose at the one end, and the other at the other end of the dish. PIGEON is a very great bird in France, and is cooked in many ways. The most elaborate of the French soups- Bisque-was originally a pigeon soup. In England the Pigeon bird is little noticed save in the form of pigeon-pie-but that is the most favoured of all the pies.

Roast Pigeons.-Barded with bacon; under the bacon a vineleaf, when it is to be had. Roast them for twenty minutes; when nearly ready, take off the barding to dust them with flour and to froth them; but it will be no disadvantage if the bacon is replaced in serving them. Orange gravy will be found a good sauce to go with them. Stewed Pigeons (Pigeons en compôte). - Stuff them with a seasoning of mixed spices, salt, chopped parsley, butter, and breadcrumbs. Half-roast them or fry them, and then proceed to stew them gently in good broth with a glass of wine in it. Add also an onion stuck with two cloves, a faggot of sweet-herbs, and some cooks say-a white cabbage or a lettuce cut in quarters. Take out the pigeons and dish them; remove also the vegetable ingredients; thicken the sauce with roux, and pour it over the birds. Garnish them with the lettuce or cabbage, if that has been selected in the preparation, but if not used, there are other garnishes such as peas, asparagus points, artichoke bottoms, mushrooms, sweetbreads, cockscombs. Chartreuse of Pigeons is done in the same way as the Chartreuse of partridges and that is in principle the same as the Perdrix aux choux or partridge with cabbage. The only difference is, that in the Chartreuse the partridges are concealed in the cabbage to satisfy the consciences of the fasting friars.

Broiled Pigeons-or Pigeons en crapaudine-trussed and flattened like a toad. The pigeons are split at the back and spread out, after the manner of the spatchcock. They are placed in a stewpan with a morsel of butter, a faggot of sweet-herbs, and some sliced onions. When half-cooked they are taken out (the faggot and onion slices also), and two yolks of eggs are mixed into the butter in which they Pike have cooked. The pigeons are to be well smeared with this mixture, and afterwards covered with breadcrumbs which have been intermixed with some chopped shalot and parsley. They can then go to the grill, and may be served with a little clear gravy into which has been squeezed some lemon-juice. The pigeons, it will be observed, are split and half-cooked before being breadcrumbed and grilled; for otherwise the breadcrumbs would be burned before the pigeons could be grilled enough.

Pigeon Pie. Cover the bottom of the dish with veal cutlets or small and tender collops of beef, quite free from fat and bone, and season them with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Over these lay the birds, cut in halves, and each half stuffed with some maître d'hôtel butter mixed with the livers parboiled and minced. Put half a dozen hard-boiled yolks of eggs in among them, and if the bottom of the dish has been lined with veal, a few thin slices of ham may be placed above the birds. Add some bits of butter and a good moistening of veal broth. Then cover over with paste in the usual way, and bake it for an hour. It is usual to stick three or four pigeons' feet in the centre of the roof. This is a custom of great antiquity, to which many good people object, because they can see no use in it. These feet, however, date from the origin of the pie, and contain an allusion to its name. See Pie.