Tuesday 21 July 2009

Pork Pies and Mead (part I)


This part noting the absence of any mead drinking, but plenty of pork pies eating.

In an effort to escape London and forget the guilt associated with not attending my cousin's wedding my sister and I headed towards Lincoln, for no more reason that Lincoln is apparently a place you go to, and is on the way to nowhere else.

By the random routes we travel, we stopped in Melton Mowbray to test the pork pies, and to hear a tale of the history of the pork pie from the nice lady in the local cheese shop (the Melton Cheese Board).

So the story went, Melton used to be famous for cheese and specifically Stilton from the nearby village of Stilton (cunning name). Apparently some enterprising chap took the left over whey from the cheese making and started making special pies.

Having already devoured a delightful pork pie topped with Stilton from ‘ye olde pork pie shop’ this seemed like an entirely plausible story. My interest in Stilton and Mead having already been piqued an idea started to form (to follow in part II).

But is the story true? Wikipedia describes an authentic pie thus:
The Melton Mowbray Pork Pie uses uncured meat, giving the meat in a Melton pie a grey colour. Hand formed with no mould, a Melton Mowbray pie also commonly has a hand-formed crust. This style of production gives the Melton Mowbray pie a slightly irregular in shape form after baking, as with any hand-made pie.

So not a mention of Stilton then? The Pork Pie Appreciation Society doesn’t talk much of the history of the pork pie, but is well worth a browse simply for the surreal nature of life. Local food heroes mentions the use of Whey, and a more obscure internet site reads thus:
A major bi-product of the milk used to make Stilton is whey and this turned out to be an excellent food source for pigs, thus the dairies began keeping pigs. With a use being needed for the pork, the pork pie developed along with other pork products and Melton Mowbray became home to both the pork pie and Stilton cheese, two of the most renowned products in England!

And the view that Stilton and Pork Pies go hand in hand, is reinforced by the discovery of Mead in the Cheese Shop. An Eglantine mead that is entirely unfamiliar to me.

So Stilton, Pork pies and Mead, It’s all interconnected if only I could figure out why.

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