How a pocket-sized snack(袖珍小吃) changed the English language
[1] Tiny pies have been a favorite food in Britain since the Middle Ages – and have changed the English language with idioms（习语）, nursery rhyme verses（童谣诗歌）, even a mention（提及，说起） by Shakespeare.
[2] Every March, St Mary’s church in the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray becomes a cathedral（大教堂 ）of pies: it fills with tables bearing（具有） more than 800 pastries（pastry的复数，甜点）.
[3] Some recipes（食谱） are particularly offbeat（不落俗套的）. While the quirkiest（离奇的） entry（条目） in this year's Speciality Meat category was a cricket pie板球派, one celebrated（有名的，著名的） past winner（过去的获奖者） was Phil Warmsley's squirrel pie（松鼠派） in 2014. Warmsley told me that it has medieval origins（中世纪的起源）, but still sells out（卖完） at Market Harborough’s twice-monthly farmers’ market. “They're also a great way to deal with a pest（害虫）,” he laughs.
[4] It’s not just the squirrel pie: several hundred years ago, there were many types of pies already a beloved（心爱的） part of British cuisine（菜肴）. Records from the 11th Century show East Anglia paying levies（levy：征税） to the Crown with herring pies（鲱鱼馅饼） – a practice that continued for 800 years – with towns required to send an annual tribute（贡物） of “100 herrings baked in 24 pasties（馅饼）”.
[5] Records of Henry VI’s 1429 coronation（加冕礼） speak of a suitably（相配地） regal pie（富豪派） of ‘Partryche and Pecock’, while the 1465 feast（宴会） for the new Archbishop（大主教） of York saw guests scoff（贪婪的吃） 5,500 venison pasties（鹿肉馅饼）. The great artistic chronicler（艺术史学家） of English life, William Hogarth, puts a street pie seller centre-stage in his 1750 painting The March to Finchley.
[6] Even in their early days, pies served different purposes for the rich and poor: as show-off delicacies(炫耀的美味佳肴) for the former and portable food（便携式食品） for the latter. So while wealthy feasts（富有的盛宴） might include pies containing anything from game birds（鸟类） to mussels（蚌）, the less well-off（手头宽裕的） used simpler pies as a way to have food while doing outdoor work or travelling – the crust外壳 both carried and preserved the tasty美味的，可口的 filling.
[7] Take, for example, the Bedfordshire Clanger: a British classic which cleverly combines main course and dessert, with savoury咸的，辣的 ingredients like pork猪肉 at one end and sweet ingredients like pear at the other. The name comes from a local slang word, ‘clang’, which means to eat voraciously狼吞虎咽的. However, cramming填塞 two courses into a pie makes a clanger rather unwieldy难控制的 – and all too easy to drop, inspiring the English phrase 'dropping a clanger当众食言' for a careless mistake.
[8] Pies have been adding rich flavour to the English language for centuries. Even Shakespeare got in on the act, writing in his 1613 play Henry VIII that “No man’s pie is freed from his ambitious finger”, giving English the phrase 'a finger in every pie每件事情都参与'.
[9] Meanwhile, the description of a drunken state as ‘pie-eyed喝醉了的’ likely takes its cue from someone who, thanks to having over-imbibed, has eyes as wide and blank as the top of a pie. ‘As easy as pie极容易’ – first recorded as 'like eating pie' in the horse-racing newspaper Sporting Life in 1886 – springs from pies’ historical role as convenience food便利食品.
[10] ‘Eating humble pie忍气吞声’, meanwhile, comes from medieval deer hunting, when meat from a successful hunt was shared out on the basis of social status基于社会地位. While the finest cuts of venison鹿肉 went to the rich and powerful, the lower orders下层社会 made do with凑合着用 the ‘nombles’: a Norman French诺曼第法语 word for deer offal内脏. Anglicisation英语化 saw ‘nombles’ pie become ‘humble’ pie.
[11] As well as changing the English language, pies have become a cultural treasure in their own right.
[12] In 2008, the European Union gave Melton Mowbray's pork pies ‘protected geographical indication受保护的地理标志’ (PGI) – the same elite status as Champagne香槟酒. The Melton Carnegie Museum explains how the pies from this Norman market town developed such fame: pigs in particular had a taste for the whey乳清 left over剩下的 from making the equally-renowned local Stilton cheese, leading to many local farmers keeping – and eating – the animals. This resulted in the chopped pork猪肉馅 which was put into the pie, cooked and then eaten cold. These became popular horseback在马背上的 meals for the area’s large fox-hunting fraternity行会 from the 17th Century onwards向前, as well as for local farm workers.
[13] Another treasure of a tradition can be found in Yorkshire's Denby Dale, which is the world capital of giant pies. The village baked its first mammoth庞大的 creation in 1788 to mark George III's recovery from a bout of madness一阵疯狂, though sadly there is no written record of its size or ingredients. Since then, nine ‘megapies’ have been created. The 1815 Victory Pie celebrated the defeat of Napoleon with a pie containing two sheep and 20 fowls鸡, while the Millennium Pie of 2000 was 12m long and weighed 10 tonnes.
[14] Pies have provided a way for the British elite精锐 to show off with more than just size. The 16th and 17th Centuries saw the rise of so-called Surprised Pyes, created to impress guests at aristocratic贵族的 banquets by concealing隐藏 unexpected things under an additional removable抽取式的 可移动的 pastry lid糕点盖子 added after cooking.
[15] One gigantic巨大的 16th-Century royal pie concealed a gaggle of 一群musicians who began playing when the pie was cut, while another trick saw people burst out of a pie to recite poetry朗诵诗歌. Concealing live birds was also popular – hence the ‘four and twenty blackbirds’ in the nursery rhyme童谣 Sing a Song of Sixpence六便士.
[16] The Regional Pie category at the Awards acknowledges how pies are edible markers of not only one’s social status, but of different British regions. This year's winner was a Norfolk Plough Pudding, made with sausage香肠 meat, bacon, sage鼠尾草, onion and brown sugar红糖. It’s traditionally baked in that part of East Anglia东英格兰 for the first Monday after Epiphany主现节（每年六月一日纪念耶稣显灵的节日）, when spring ploughing春耕 is meant to begin.
[16] But it was Cornwall’s eye-catching引人注目的 Stargazy Pie that might be the most distinctive. Cooked with sardines沙丁鱼 gazing up from the crust, this distinctive pie has roots in a 17th-Century tale from the fishing village of Mousehole. The story goes that a fisherman named Tom Bawcock braved December storms to land a huge haul of fish大量的鱼 that saved the village from starvation饿死. To celebrate, his catch was baked into a giant celebratory pie – with fish heads left poking out伸出 as proof that the fish famine was over. Today, Stargazy Pie is traditionally baked with seven kinds of fish, boiled potatoes, boiled eggs and white sauce白调味汁. The fish serve a practical purpose, not just a symbolic象征性的 one: oil from the heads enriches the pastry and moistens变得湿润 the pie.
[17] If that sounds somewhat quirky and fun, you’re not mistaken理解错误的. And in the 21st Century, that may be one of the best reasons to continue the pie tradition. As Reverend Kevin Ashby puts it after his blessing of the pies, a tradition of the British Pie Awards: “We must have pies. Stress can’t exist in the presence of a pie!”我们必须有馅饼，有馅饼就不会有压力