To Make A Lumber Pye

This pie recipe hails from an English household manuscript compiled between 1677 and 1711, a time when elaborate meat pies were centerpieces for festive and elite dining tables. 'Lumber pie' reflects a fascination with complex, layered flavors, blending savory meats with sweet spices and candied fruits—a culinary signature of late 17th-century England. Such pies showcased the cook's skill and the host's wealth, with ingredients such as veal, marrow, and preserved fruits indicating high status. The recipe also preserves a culinary tradition from an age when pies were as much about spectacle as about nourishment and speaks to the mingling of medieval and early modern tastes. The presence of sweetmeats and rich butters would have delighted guests during grand feasts or holiday celebrations.

Cooks would have used a heavy chopping or mincing knife for the veal and suet, a wooden trencher, and a sturdy mortar and pestle for grinding spices. Eggs would be boiled in a brass pan over an open hearth, and all mixing was done by hand in large earthenware or wooden bowls. The pie would be assembled in a deep ceramic or pewter pie dish, the lid hand-rolled with a wooden pin, and the pie baked in a wood-fired brick oven. A strainer (sieve) might be used to extract spinach juice, while a ladle would finish the pie with hot gravy.