The pie, the one in the image was created by food historian Ivan Day, is designed to be presented at the table as a glorious hand raised pie that’s heavily decorated. Inside is a big bird, stuffed with a smaller bird etc etc – think of it as an edible Russian doll covered with elaborately decorated pastry.
The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse (1740) gives a recipe for the pie using ‘whatever sort of wild fowl you can get’ alongside four pounds of butter and four bushels of flour for the pastry – which seems like rather a lot to me.
Harewood House used a recipe in the nineteenth century that involved a goose as the largest bird.
The Yorkshire pie may also be described as a stand pie because the pastry crust is hand raised.
For further information on Yorkshire pies follow here:
Pies with elaborate crusts have been served at feasts since medieval times.
Would be usual and courteous to give the person who made this pie and originally posted the photograph a credit. Thanks. His name is Ivan Day
Hello Ivan, the original recognition was on the link which I attached to the post at the time of writing, as I like to provide a trail for anyone who is interested to follow and also for ease of follow up if I need to. Having checked this morning I can see that the link no longer works. I’m very happy to change the post accordingly. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.