I’ve blogged before about how the nursery rhyme about four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie was probably a coded song sung by Blackbeard the pirate’s men, recruiting new mates. But medieval and Renaissance-era recipes really did call for baking such things.
According to the book I’ve been reading, A History of Food in 100 Recipes (p 47), medieval recipes refer to pie pastry as a “coffin,” that is, a receptacle for whatever sweet or savory filling is baked inside. It cites this sixteenth century recipe from Italy that begins:
Make the coffin of a great pie or pastry, in the bottom make a hole as big as your fist. . .
And the title of the recipe?
To Make Pies That the Birds May be Alive in Them and Fly Out When It is Cut Up.