![]() Indeed, Australia’s aforementioned most popular pie brand is lifted directly from one of England’s favourite nursery rhymes, Sing a Song of Sixpence, in which “four and twenty blackbirds” were baked into a pie. They might explain that 19th-Century English bakers created a pie to feed the masses in celebration of the victory over Napoleon in Waterloo, and that Britain’s literary traditions are riddled and rhymed with characters such as Little Jack Horner who “sat in a corner, eating his Christmas pie” and Georgie Porgie “pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry”. That expensive, exotic spices such as saffron, ginger and pepper were used in the kitchens of the English nobility to give (and disguise) flavour in pies made from delights such as venison, boar, fish and even peacock. That street vendors in medieval England sold pies as a convenience food for the poor. A British visitor to Australia might declare emphatically that pies are, in fact, classic British pub food. I’d go as far as saying that our love for a pie potentially outweighs the fandom it attracts in its country of birth. There’s not a road trip that doesn’t pit stop for a pie, nor a game of Aussie Rules footy that isn’t bettered by the purchase of a cellophane-wrapped, round Four’n Twenty, a ubiquitous meat pie brand only marginally pipped by Vegemite and pavlova in the iconic food stakes. There’s no leftover roast “chook” that doesn’t get me idly perusing a cookbook for the latest chicken pie recipe. There’s not a wintry weekend that goes by without the idea of a lunchtime pie flicking through my mind. How a pocket-sized snack changed the English language.The pastry on top was wonderfully flaky, but flimsy too, so the tomato sauce nozzle could be poked directly into the pie, mixing sugary tomato sweetness with oozy beefy mince.Īnd for most Australians, this pie obsession will happily thrive into adulthood. It came in just the right size for two smallish hands to hold, with a square casing solid enough to retain its shape mid-bite. In heater-less schools built for hot climates despite wintry days, there was nothing quite like the smell and savoury taste sensation found in this warm, mince-filled bakery delight. If you ever wondered why Australians have such an obsession with the humble meat pie, this inculcation from a very young age is possibly at the heart of it. The bag would then be placed in a basket at the front of the classroom, and returned containing said pie, steaming hot, with tomato sauce oozing from a hole in the top. ![]() On this day, we’d forgo our lunch boxes and instead pop a dollar note in a brown paper bag with our order written steadfastly on it: It marked the start of the weekend, sure, but it was also “lunch order” day, when, instead of the usual cheese sandwich, we’d get to order from the tuck shop. As an Australian school kid, the best day of the week was Friday.
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