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The first pies were very simple and generally of the savory (meat and cheese) kind.
Flaky pastry fruit-filled turnovers appeared in the early 19th century.
Some pie-type foods are made for individual consumption. pasties, turnovers, empanadas, pierogi, calzones..enjoyed by working classes and sold by street vendors.
Pie variations (cobblers, slumps, grunts, etc.) are endless! " The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the word "pie" as it relates to food to 1303, noting the word was well-known and popular by 1362. " "Pie...a word whose meaning has evolved in the course of many centuries and which varies to some extent according to the country or even to region....
A piecrust used less flour than bread and did not require anything as complicated as a brick oven for baking.
More important, though, was how pies could stretch even the most meager provisions into sustaining a few more hungry mouths...
[2]" ---Apicius, Book VII, IX, Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, edited and translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling, facsimile 1936 edition [Dover Publications: Mineola NY] 1977 (p.In the cradles of civilization (Mediterranean region including Ancient Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Arabia) the primary fat was olive oil.When combined with ground grains, it produced a rudimentary type of pastry.No one, least of all the early settlers, would probably proclaim their early pies as masterpieces of culinary delight.The crusts were often heavy, composed of some form of rough flour mixed with suet." ---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F.