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Originally posted by Bob Hurley:
I've been unsuccessfully looking for reproductions of medieval pie dishes for baking pasties. Does anyone have a source they don't mind sharing?

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Gwens at Pennsic so I'll chime in for now...hopefully she can add when she gets back.

My reading suggests that many (not all probably, but many) pies were actually baked in coffyns not in what we think of as pie dishes.

A coffyn would be a sturdy, sometimes even inedible, crust that was capable of standing with no support. Recipes I've seen (granted, later than our period) use a lot of rye flour and the like, which would make for a VERY tough and sturdy crust. This serves to contain the filling and even protects it from air and spoilage (think potted meat) for a bit.

None of the recipes that I've seen that specify using a "fine paste" mention the use of a pie pan (our modern recipes say "line your pie pan with the crust", etc) so one wonders if they did them in the style of the rustic tart tatin (ie free form). When I do hand sized pies for lunches, they are usually free form and it works fine. I can use modern pie crust and get the effect of the upright coffyn by using a spring form pan, which I remove at home so at the event its the tall pretty shape from the manuscript illos. I've also done an inedible coffyn type crust but warn my audience ahead of time .

Its my personal theory (take it for what its worth ) that bakers and cooks were different people/guilds in our period, and so there arent a lot of recipes for breads, etc in the cookbooks. There's a fair amt of fladens, krapfens, tarts and pastez but my theory is that one would have composed the tart and then taken it to the baker/bakehouse for finishing.

That said, there are a number of flat ceramic dishes in the archeological evidence that could WORK as a modern pie dish, but I dont know as our medieval counterparts would have done that.

hope this helps a little?
--AM

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Smaller individual pies would be much more convenient for my purposes anyway, I use them as a quick meal that doesn't require rekindling or restoking a fire.

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob Hurley:
Could you suggest a source or two of visual images?

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The dishes these 15th century illustrations feature are more like pies than pasties, but maybe they'll be a start ...

• Romance of Lancelot
• 15th century Book of Hours
  
• Book of Hours of Anne of Brittany

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quote:

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Originally posted by Karen Larsdatter:
The dishes these 15th century illustrations feature are more like pies than pasties, but maybe they'll be a start ...

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exactly the ones I was thinking of, along with the neat illos from Robert May (albeit later than our period, but oh so pretty )

thank goodness there's someone out there who's books arent all in boxes!

--AM, in the midst of a move, and missing her library

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