Have Some Turnip Pie?

Outside of pot pies, with their savory meat fillings, modern pies nearly always have sweet fillings, either fruit or something richer and more pudding-like. But pie used to be a home for anything and everything. The very word “pie” is thought to refer to the magpie, a bird famous for its higgledy-piggledy nest. Mincemeat, that peculiar mixture of meat, suet, nuts and dried fruits, is a perfectly typical medieval pie filling.

The old habit of cooking all sorts of things in pie continued surprisingly late in the game. In our own time, people occasionally threw vegetables into quiche during the quiche craze of the ‘60s (basically to take the curse off all the eggs and cream in it), but vegetable pies were absolutely typical in the Renaissance--and they were always sweetened if the cook could afford sugar.

In a 1507 book by the Venetian chef Christofaro di Messisbugo, there are recipes for pies made from pureed fava beans, asparagus, artichokes and other vegetables, all flavored with sugar, ginger and cinnamon (and, this being Italy, grated cheese). Sweetened artichoke pie was still being made in England 200 years later, for that matter. Messisbugo gave a spinach pie recipe flavored with figs, walnuts and raisins that’s reminiscent of tarte de blettes, the chard and raisin pie still made in Provence.

It’s often said that the first settlers in Virginia and New England made pumpkin and squash pies because they didn’t have any bearing fruit trees in the early days, but they were actually continuing a regular European practice. Turnip and potato pies were being cooked back in England by people who had no problem at all getting apples.