Melton Mowbray Pork Pie

Appearance & taste

The pies have a bow-walled pastry case that gives them their typical curved shape. The pastry is golden brown and firm and has a full baked flavour. The pork filling is uncured and therefore grey, the colour of roast pork. It is moist and crumbly, has a full meaty flavour and is seasoned mainly with pepper. There is a layer of jelly between the filling and the pastry wall.

Meat makes up at least 30 % of the whole pie. Artificial colourings, flavourings and preservatives are not permitted. The pies come in various sizes and weights.

Production

The pastry ingredients are mixed, formed into sheets and lids and left to rest before further processing. The pork is diced or minced and mixed with the other ingredients to make the filling. The pastry sheets are fixed in rings or raised around a cone, the “dolly”, or a similar holder. Then the filling goes in, and the lid is put on and pressed down. Some pies are hand-raised, others have their edges crimped decoratively by hand.

The pies are then taken out of the rings and placed on the baking tray without a holder. They are baked until the pastry is golden brown and filled with jelly once they have cooled. They are then cooled to below 8 °C. Some pies are frozen before baking, for baking later or for baking at home. Others are sold still warm within four hours of being filled with jelly.

Origin & history

From the 16th century onwards the land around Melton Mowbray was enclosed. Instead of open fields, the hedged fields of the East Midlands appeared, and farming shifted from sheep to cattle. The surplus milk was made into cheese, above all Blue Stilton. The whey left over, mixed with bran, made good pig feed, and the dairy farmers began to keep pigs.

The hawthorn hedges gave foxes ideal routes, and fox hunting became an autumn and winter sport. From the middle of the 18th century the hunters gathered in Melton Mowbray for the season. At this time pigs were slaughtered and pies baked; the hunt servants carried them as provisions, and soon the hunters themselves took them along too. In 1831 Edward Adcock began sending pies to London by stagecoach. With the railway, bakehouses sprang up near Melton Mowbray station, and the pies were sent as far as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. From the 1870s to the turn of the century the trade boomed.

The First World War ended the exports and started a decline. According to the specification, the trade revived in the 20 years before the application and is exporting again. At first the pies were probably made only in Melton Mowbray and its outskirts; they have been baked by the same method in the wider surrounding area for over 100 years, which is why the area is larger today.