[Sca-cooks] What is the difference between a pie and a tart?

[Alexander Clark]

On Fri, 28 Nov 2014 16:29:21 -0600, Stefan li Rous
<StefanliRous at gmail.com> wrote:

> Okay, what do you see as the difference between a pie and a tart? Brekke, why wasn?t the tart as good as a pie?  Did you vary the filling?

> I?ve struggled with this for years in trying to figure out whether to put various messages in the tart-msg file or one of the pie-msg files. I thought pies had top crusts, but tarts did not. However, this would mean than all those things called pumpkin pies in the stores and restaurants are actually pumpkin tarts, not pumpkin pies.

> Perhaps I should just merge both together, but split them out by filling types.

The true answer to the general question in the subject line is that a
pastry that is traditionally called a pie is a pie, and a pastry that
is traditionally called a tart is a tart.  Non-traditional recipes can
take either name according to the opinion of whoever popularizes them.

In period, tarts could include great tarts, cover tarts, and close
tarts indorred, so I doubt that tarts had to be either small or open.
There were (among others) pies of Paris, which contained flesh and
fruit, and tarts of flesh, which contained flesh and fruit.  And in
the medieval feast menus, both tarts and crustades were far more
important than pies.

(BTW, one copy of the Duke of Lancaster's feast menu (Curye on
Inglysch menu 2) lists "pesson" together with the pike, instead of the
crustade lumbard that usually appears there.  The only likely way that
I can see for "pesson" to have been written into that spot is if a
previous version said "pyes", and a copyist misread this as "peys" and
corrected it to the plural.  This would suggest that some people might
have called some of the same pastries either "pyes" or "crustades".)

HTH.

-- 
Henry of Maldon/Alex Clark