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.
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Pies with elaborate crusts have been served at feasts since medieval times.