Flampoyntes

PERIOD: England, 14th century | SOURCE: Forme of Cury | CLASS: Authentic

DESCRIPTION: Pork and Cheese Pie

ORIGINAL RECEIPT:

Take fat pork ysode. Pyke it clene; grynde it smal. Grynde chese & do therto with sugur & gode powdours. Make a coffyn of an ynche depe, and do this fars therin. Make a thynne foile of gode past & cerue out theroff small poyntes, frye hem & put hem in the fars, & bake it vp &c.

- Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). New York: for The Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.

MODERN RECIPE:

• Pastry dough for 2 nine-inch pie crusts
• 1 pound ground pork
• 2 C grated, mild cheese
• 3/4 C sugar
• 1 tsp each, cinnamon and powdered ginger
• 1/8 tsp each mace and cloves
• Butter for sautéing

2. Line a pie pan with pastry dough.

3. In a frying pan, brown the ground pork.

4. In a bowl, combine pork, grated cheese, sugar, and spices. Fill the pie crust with this mixture. Bake for half an hour. Remove and allow to cool.

5. Roll out the dough for the second crust, and, with a sharp knife, cut it into little diamonds, about an inch and a half long.

6. In a frying pan, over low heat, melt butter and fry the pastry diamonds until they are golden brown. Take care they do not burn.

7. With a table knife, make incisions in the top of the pie, about three quarters of an inch deep, and laid out in an interesting pattern. Insert the pastry diamonds halfway into these incisions, so that a pattern of little points is made.

Serves eight to twelve.

NOTES ON THE RECIPE:

This pie is a "flan" with "points;" I bake the pie completely before adding the pastry points.

I have chosen to brown ground pork rather than grinding boiled pork.