Lemon Pie...or Tart???

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Thanks to you all. I still haven't made my dam lemon tart. I had run out of flour, not just lemons, so I went to the city today to shop for supplies! So tomorrow is the big day.

The crust can be on top or on the bottom or both.

I've never made a pie with no bottom crust...

Many pot pies (chicken, beef) don't have a bottom crust. Shepherd's pie and Cottage pie don't have a bottom crust.
 
You got me thinking Andy. Perhaps, "back in the days of yore", when Shepherds and Cottagers made their pies - they did have crusts? Both top and bottom? To actually be able to hold their "pies" in their hands, as in wrapped in some cloth to take to the fields with them. Very like the Cornish Pasty - (but not for miners of course and not Cornish :rolleyes:).

Yes I call them pies too, but I think of them really as a layered casserole.
 
There are "hand pies" in many cultures. Whether you call them pasties or empanadas or turnovers or whatever.
 
...You mentioned galettes. Honestly, I could never see the point of such an unattractive form of pie...
I like galettes. I think of it as a pie that was created for those of us who are pie-crimping challenged. With no seam, I can't get a leak. ;)

Besides, what difference does the shape make when they each taste the same and ice cream hides the shape? :LOL:
 
There are "hand pies" in many cultures. Whether you call them pasties or empanadas or turnovers or whatever.

Yes, yes, I know that, I meant that the shepherd's pie as we know it could possibly have started out like a pasty.

(btw - you wear pasties but eat a pasty) :ROFLMAO::LOL:
 
I DO NOT wear pasties! anymore



img_1489156_0_69398c5eb52a6457949ba20220abb758.gif


ohhh shucky darns...
 
Reference AndyM: "...there are 'hand pies' in many cultures.

Reckon street food's been around a long time, longer than we perhaps thought...what do you say?

di reston


Enough is never as good as a feast Oscar Wilde
 
I like galettes. I think of it as a pie that was created for those of us who are pie-crimping challenged. With no seam, I can't get a leak. ;)

Besides, what difference does the shape make when they each taste the same and ice cream hides the shape? :LOL:

Well, it's hard to disagree! But it is just a matter of personal taste. I'm not that great at pie crimping either, but I find the appearance of a galette not to my liking.
 
For some food history on the topic of pie, check out this link:

Food Timeline: history notes-pie & pastry

OH MY GAWD...too much information!!!

However, come on, let's be honest here. When you hear the word pie, what immediately comes into your mind? I'd say it's something that looks quite a bit like this:

http://foodnetwork.sndimg.com/conte...FNK_Apple-Pie_s4x3.jpg.rend.sniipadlarge.jpeg

If someone just says, oh, I've got a craving "for pie" they probably don't mean a hand pie (tasty as they are; my favorite food of all time is probably vegetable samosas).:pig:
 
Arghh, I can't find the article that went to lengths saying why this and why that.. suffice it to say it is often interchangeable but I get the distinct impression from all the links that pasty is the Cornish version.

Pasty Association in the UK

The pronunciation is also different...
pasty as in pass tee
pastie as in pay stee or paste (as in glued) tee
 
...However, come on, let's be honest here. When you hear the word pie, what immediately comes into your mind?...

Of course, that's the iconic pie that most people think of. That doesn't mean it's the only type of pie. We're just discussing the broader topic.
 
I agree 100% that is a pie and this is a tart

I think that is quite right by contemporary standards. Tart and pie are quite fluid. My usual apple pie recipe, as it appears in Ancient Cookery (1381), is described as... For to make Tartys in Apples: Take good apples and good spices & Figs and raisins and Pears and when they are well braid colour with saffron well and do it in a coffin and do it forth to bake well.

(coffin means a bread crust, BTW, is not some goth thing)

Usually with early recipes pie was savory and tart was sweet. So eel pie, beef pie, liver pie, pot pie, etc... while apple tart, peach tart, again etc...

we also have tort, which I generally think of as dense flour heavy tarts, with chocolate or some such to make them homogeneous instead of with chunks.

American Apple Pie, which started as an Appalachian thing, making a meat pie with chunk apples, set the view for American pies, I now think of a 'pie' as simpler, chunk ingredients, generally crust + filling construction without a lot of elaboration. Tarts are a bit more processed, and have internal consistency, i.e. not chunks, but a consistent filling. And torts are smaller, and quite refined.

So sweet pies for me are the pickup trucks and suv's of the dessert world, tarts the sporty coups, and torts the two seat sports cars, when you also might see a souflee or some such.

Each has its place, we even have a crisp or a coddler which is a step less refined than a pie in my view, but still tasty, great for campfires and when you don't have a consistent heat source.

Lemons, I say as an ingredient, are most useful in the tart to tort area, as, well, they are much sour and acid, and don't chunk well, like an apple or pear might. So I'd even if I made a lemon merraingue pie, think of it as a tart traditionally, but the nomenclature is fluid and we do think of that as a pie. Again key lime pie also, I think should be a key lime tart, for consistency, but called a pie. Same with pumpkin.

I say as a rule of thumb, the less you do to your ingredients the more you are in crisp/coddle to pie the more you do, and the more separation you get into tart and tort.

The end of this is, trained linguists are still pouring over those four (or five) words, and it also varies culturally. I like reading old recipes and in the European and British tradition most of which they call Tartyes we would call pies, and most of which they call Torte, we call a tart.

I've even confused myself now, and not gotten into meat pies. I am now working on a medieval eel pie recipe (yup I got eel, and due to my wife making a tragic bet that really overestimated her view of the american electorate, the unthinkable has happend and if I prepare an eel pie she must join me in eating it). Eel, of course is not an everyday food for us as it would have been for a medieval peasant. I have some in the freezer, that I had to go to lengths to obtain. But eel, fish, meat, and fowl pie were the thing at least through the early elizabethan. A lot of things were called Tartyes as they were sweet not savory.

My $0.02.

Cheers,

TBS
 
E-Fox, I look at PIE as the overall category and TART as a sub-set. That is, all tarts are pies but not all pies are tarts...
 
I look at PIE as the overall category and TART as a sub-set. That is, all tarts are pies but not all pies are tarts...

Now yer talking. Well, I just pulled my, ahem, lemon-orange tart out of the oven and put it into the garage to cool, even though the recipe says you can eat it hot.

Eating a lemon PIE hot is nothing I have ever heard, though. So, there's another angle to debate!

I just love that foodtimeline.org site! :)


PS: I have never used lemon pie filling, have you? The few times I made lemon PIE I did it from scratch with the recipe from an old (1950) cookbook I have.
 
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