The Scotch Pie: Half-Time on the Terraces

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The pie's construction and modern popularity are well documented. Its early history is not, and claims about medieval origins are speculative. The older recipes and street history come from the folklorist F. Marian McNeill's The Scots Kitchen (1929; revised 1963). The family history of the raised pie comes from Alan Davidson's The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, ed. Tom Jaine, 2014). That book, published in 2014, still describes the Scotch pie as "usually of mutton"; most commercial pies today are beef, so its description is given here as dated reference.

Construction

established The Scotch pie is made with hot-water crust pastry, a firm pastry made by mixing flour with hot water and fat, which can be raised into shape and holds its form when baked. The pie is round, a few inches across, with a lid set about a centimetre below the rim, often with a small hole in the centre. Pies are usually baked in batches and sold warm.

Mutton to beef

established Traditionally, Scotch pies were filled with minced mutton, seasoned heavily with pepper and sometimes mace or nutmeg. Today most are filled with minced beef or a mixture, partly because mutton is less available. Variations include macaroni pies and steak pies, a different, larger dish often eaten at New Year.

established The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen (1929), records the older form under the name "small mutton pies", not "Scotch pie". Her traditional recipe uses lean mutton, ideally from the leg, cut small and seasoned with salt, pepper and a little mace or nutmeg. The crust is a hot-water paste of flour and boiling beef dripping and water, raised by hand into small cases (she suggests shaping them round a tumbler) or pressed into ring tins. Each pie gets a pastry lid and a small hole in the centre, and after baking it is filled up through the hole with hot gravy and served very hot.

established The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) gives a matching description of more recent Scottish recipes for little hot mutton pies: salt, pepper and mace or nutmeg, in a crust made by the hot-water method. It specifies beef suet for the fat, where McNeill uses beef dripping; both are beef fat, and either gives the firm, self-supporting crust.

established The Companion places mutton pies in a longer British history. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century there were two kinds. Sweet mutton or lamb pies, with raisins, dates, sugar, candied peel, cinnamon and cloves, lasted in recipe books well into the eighteenth century, long after sugar had left most meat dishes. Savoury mutton pies, filled with cutlets and forcemeat, carried on into the nineteenth. The Scotch pie is the savoury branch, cut down to hand size.

Pie-wives and piemen

established McNeill gathers several witnesses to the pie as street and tavern food. Scott, in Guy Mannering, describes Edinburgh's High Street "clanging with the voices of oyster-women and the bells of piemen". Robert Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh records the Pious Club, whose members met every night in a "pye-house", leaving it uncertain whether the name came from their piety or their pies. A verse by Charles Spence on the winter market at Errol, in the Carse of Gowrie, has a pedlar crying hot mutton pies at a penny each or four for a groat.

established Pie-wives earned local fame. McNeill quotes the reminiscences of Professor James Stuart, who remembered Mrs Gillespie, the pie-wife of his St Andrews schooldays, whose mutton was minced very fine in a standing crust strong enough to hold the gravy. In Glasgow, "Granny Black" in the Candleriggs was known far beyond the city for her twopenny pies, and a visit to her shop was a treat for farmers and their wives coming into town.

traditional McNeill adds, without a source, that these pies "were praised by Dr Johnson". Johnson did visit St Andrews in 1773, but no reference to the pies has been traced here, so the claim should not be repeated as fact. The Oxford Companion to Food repeats the story cautiously, saying Scottish mutton pies were "apparently" liked by Johnson and that it is not obvious whether they were sweet or savoury. It gives no primary source either, so the Companion's mention does not count as independent confirmation.

established McNeill's book also shows how loosely the word "pie" travelled. Her "Bride's Pie (A Scots Pie)", from Meg Dods (1826), is a rich sweet mince pie of calves' feet, suet, apples and dried fruit, with a ring hidden in the crust for a wedding feast. It is unrelated to the small savoury pie. It belongs instead with the "bride pies" of seventeenth-century England, which The Oxford Companion to Food lists among the over-stuffed show pies of the period.

The football pie

established The pie is closely associated with Scottish football. It is sold at almost every ground and eaten at half-time, often with a cup of Bovril, a hot beef drink. Supporters' websites and newspapers regularly rank clubs by the quality of their pies.

The championship

established Since 1999 Scottish Bakers, the trade association, has run the World Scotch Pie Championship, judging hundreds of entries each year. Winners report big increases in sales. The competition has expanded to include other categories, such as savoury pies and sausage rolls.

Origins

shared The origins of the Scotch pie are uncertain. Mutton pies were sold widely in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some writers suggest an English origin; others link it to Scottish bakers' traditions. Popular claims of medieval or Roman origin are not supported.

established What can be said is where the form comes from. The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd edn, 2014) describes two old traditions of pie-making. One begins in medieval Arab cookery. The other begins in the bread ovens of medieval Europe, where anything that was not bread was baked in a free-standing "coffin" of thick, mostly inedible pastry. That pastry was a hot-water dough made with lard, strong enough to hold a stew. The Companion names the English pork pie as its modern representative and the Scotch pie as another, "straight-sided but with a capacious top rim to hold gravy and peas". The Scotch pie is thus a small, now edible, version of a very old way of baking meat. That is a claim about the type, not about the date of the Scotch pie itself.

shared The word "pie" is itself a puzzle. The Companion notes the suggestion that it comes from "magpie", implying a miscellany, the sort of jumble a magpie collects. It also distinguishes pies from pasties: pies were larger and had a form, either a dish or a raised pastry wall, and were not folded or wrapped.

established The nearest foreign relative is in southern France. The town of Pézenas makes a petit pâté, a raised pie of mutton and fruit no larger than a cotton reel. The Companion reports the local tradition that the recipe was passed on by the staff of Lord Clive of India, who stayed nearby for his health in 1768. Whether or not that story is true, it shows a small British-style mutton raised pie surviving abroad.

• The lid of a Scotch pie sits below the rim.
• Scotch pies were traditionally made with mutton.
• They are a half-time staple at Scottish football.
• A World Scotch Pie Championship has run since 1999.
• In Scotland a Scotch pie is usually just called "a pie".
• The traditional recipe in McNeill's The Scots Kitchen fills the baked pie up with hot gravy through the hole in the lid.
• Old Edinburgh piemen rang bells as they sold their pies in the High Street.
• Glasgow's "Granny Black" of the Candleriggs was famous for her twopenny pies.
• The Scotch pie descends from the medieval "coffin", a pastry case that was not meant to be eaten.
• Pézenas in France makes a tiny mutton raised pie said to have arrived with Lord Clive's household in 1768.
• Mutton pies were once often sweet, with raisins, dates and spices.

• Disputed: Where the Scotch pie came from. Its origins are uncertain. Mutton pies were sold widely in Britain, and some writers suggest an English origin while others link it to Scottish bakers' traditions. Popular claims of medieval or Roman origin are not supported, though the form descends from the medieval pastry "coffin".
• Myth: Scots call it a "Scotch pie". In Scotland it is usually just "a pie" or "mince pie". McNeill's older recipe is called "small mutton pies".
• Myth: Dr Johnson praised the pies. McNeill gives no source, and no evidence for it has been found. The Oxford Companion to Food repeats the story only with an "apparently" and gives no primary source either.
• Myth: The Scotch pie is usually mutton. It traditionally was, and the Companion still says so, but most commercial pies are now beef.
• Myth: The old "Bride's Pie (A Scots Pie)" was a Scotch pie. It was a rich sweet mince pie of calves' feet, suet, apples and dried fruit, unrelated to the small savoury pie.