Biography of the word cake
Indeed, in our latitudes you can not find a more familiar and affordable dish, and the pie itself with our hand almost from the cradle. Meanwhile, there are at least a couple of hundred variations around the world, and even in the Russian kitchen he knew, you can find several dozen bread pieces filled with all kinds of fillings. Therefore, we again decided to plunge deeper into the history of seemingly ordinary, but in fact such curious dishes.
This time we examine the fascinating adventures of the pie. Who first wrapped things in bread? The search for the president will lead us to the homeland of human civilization - a triangle between the south of Europe, the West of Asia and North of Africa. It was in these territories that the Neolithic people, who founded the first settlements, began to master the tools, the simplest agriculture and cattle breeding.
And it was here that a primitive breadpecraft made of rough cereal flour made a filling. Judging by the discovered evidence, it was honey. The dish was prepared on hot coals, like almost all the food of those times. This iconic “Inversion” for humanity occurred, according to scientists, in the area of the year BC. With the acquisition of statehood, the Egyptians developed their skills baking bread with various fillers.
Now nuts and fruits joined the honey, and the process of manufacturing such simple food was even depicted on one of the drawings in the tomb of the pharaoh Ramses II. But the Sumerians were lovers of a more satisfying filling; There, on one of the clay tablets dating from a year BC. True, that it was, and how it looked in reality, we will never know. The main engines of the culture of further years in the person of the Greeks were able to designate one of the main differences in the pie from bread: fat for the first began to add fat to the dough.
Then another trend was outlined, which slowed down the parish of the very, familiar cake. They did not know how to work with the test, but it could act as a protective coating for what they covered. And they covered pieces of meat or even whole small carcasses to protect them from drying during cooking. Also, such a hard bread crust served a kind of cannibal container that allowed the finished dish to be stored a little longer.
However, she herself was often inedible. But the usual sweet pies did not disappear, they were prepared by the Greeks, which the playwright Aristophanes wrote, and the Romans who adopted their experience. For example, the first Roman cake contained a filling of honey and goat cheese. Such dishes acted not only as food, but often they were brought as a gift to the gods during various prayers, ceremonies and sacrifices.
Such an offering was often a pie called “placenta”, somewhat reminiscent of a modern cheesecake. Thermopoly, the ancient Roman fast food Romans, being large gourmets, generally significantly expanded the culinary horizons of the pie. He was not ignored by the Great Roman Culinary Apitius, who mentioned the pie in his famous cookbook of the first century. And to honey, fruits and nuts, over time, they began to add meat, mollusks and lampates yes, all together.
Coffins from the dough as a culinary tradition of the custom to cover meat with a dough to preserve juiciness over the years not only did not go away, and to the Middle Ages turned into something new, into a culture of preparing coffins. Yes, it is the coffins, because the word Coffyns is translated. Grobopirog was a dough almost stone in its hardness, which was also a dishes, filled with various types of meat and poultry, abundantly flavored fruits, sugar and spices.
Including those that are considered to be dessert today. Yes, in the Middle Ages they knew a lot about the combination of products. So, this sarcophagus from the dough was supposed to not soak from the juices secreted by the filling, so that they baked it in advance, and sometimes used several times. The hard dough itself was considered conditionally inedible, but often crusts, soaked in meat and spices, went to servants or poor people.
And the parts that remained dry could continue to be crushed into the crumb and used to thicken stewed dishes. So, having reconciled with all the oddities of medieval cooking, we completely forgot about the love of the nobility of those times for the shocking and about the punitive sales of the Middle Ages we have already talked a lot. So, ciga pies often became an impromptu cage for various small living creatures like rabbits, frogs or even blackbirds, which, at the time of cutting of the dough, jumped out or flew out to the amazed sighs of the audience.
All this fauna, good, was not baked inside, but placed in a finished coffin. The story with 24 black throws generally became the cultural property of England, and a poem known in the English -speaking environment was even composed of it, which in our slightly adapted translation was under the authorship of Marshak.By the way, it was thanks to this story with birds that the traditional English pies of accessory appeared - a miniature ceramic thrush, which is placed in the dough for the duration of the baking and which acts as a exhaust valve for hot air, which otherwise can break the dough from the inside.
But what can I say, not only the animals found themselves in a bread cage, there were people there. For example, a dwarf named Jeffrey Hudson, who appeared directly from a huge pie on one of the feasts, not only could surprise the English royal couple, but for many years became their favorite and faithful servant. These are the pies ... A pie instead of a sandwich - the emergence of fast food by the XIV century begins to mention the word Pies Star.
The very origin of this word is still unclear, but many scientists are inclined to the version with Magpie Magpie, Star. This bird collects a huge amount of all kinds of rubbish in its nest, just like the medieval cake was the concentration of the whole edible, which could be reached. Yes, and a variety of birds often acted as a filling of pies, including, possibly, magpies.
The pies became the favorite treat not only the nobility, but also the simpler people. The recipes of bourgeois and peasants did not differ in such frills, but in a modern look they seem even more pleasant to taste. These were all kinds of cakes with a filling laid out from above or wrapped in them, as well as the prototypes of compact pies that are familiar to us today.
The iconic for those times was the Corniel pie, better known as Kornish's mouth. Do not be afraid of the words “mouth”, they also periodically denote baking, and in the XIII century, namely, until those times, one can trace the fate of the ancestors of the Cornuely cake that was called various pieces in the test from the northern regions of France and from the territory of the British islands.
According to the custom, everything that could be caught there was wrapped there, so they were jaws with a bird, and venison, and even with herring. And they served such pies often to the rich table on the dinners of aristocrats. However, after a couple of centuries, the pies have gained immense popularity from the lower classes and became the most preferred option for lunch for miners, other hard workers and even sailors.
And this happened due to the compactness of this cake, its convenient shape and a hearty filling. It is believed that a lush crescent in the dough is a kind of thick cheburek, it was convenient to eat with dirty hands, leaving the edges for which the person held on to emission. The version was not confirmed over time, but it is this form of this baking that is considered traditional and the only true.
As well as the filling, which also has a fixed composition: beef, onions, potatoes, troughs and neutral spices, such as Perty salt, where all the ingredients are quite roughly cut into a cube. The root of the mouth folded a strict shape and appetizing contents, we get the same cornuel pie. Yes, so the same that in the year he received the status of a protected geographical instruction.
So now the local Cornuel baking, and the pie exclusively produced there can be called the root of the mouth, has much more in common with wine than with simple bread pieces. Perhaps only the wine is so zealously controlled by the place of origin. Excuse me, Italians, but pizza - this is also Fokacch's pie a little away from wrapping the filling in the dough and recall the open pies and all sorts of cheesecakes.
So, cakes with cheese baked on them, onions or garlic, herbs, mushrooms, anchovies and other ingredients characteristic of the South European climate were prepared from the time BC. And such cakes were widespread much more extensive than a closed pie. Examples are the Levantian Manakish, Greek Pete, served with filling inside or outside, and even Indian cakes of the mouth and parata.
Yes, and purely Italian focachcia, rooted in the ancient Etruscan past of these territories, can also act as a kind of simple open cake. One way or another, flat bread pieces with a variety of fillings applied on top were popular among the Italian poor as a cheap and affordable street food. Naples with crowds of poor and hungry hard workers, which were called Lazaroni, became the geographical center of the glory of hearty cakes.
Neapolitans with appetite absorbed cakes with a hearty filling, which, according to the customs of those times, could be not only salty, but also sweet, and possibly all together at the same time. And this situation did not change at least until the 17th century, when tomatoes sailed to Europe from overseas travel. A little cultural grout-and here it is, a classic tomato-sample pizza!
It was the recipe, now known under the name “Margarita”, which became the synonym for the simplest and usual pizza. Meanwhile, she entered mass culture only in the year, when the Italian Queen Margarita during the visit of the royal family to Naples appreciated the taste of pizza presented to her in the colors of the Italian flag.It consisted of Mozarella, tomatoes and green basil.
Well, the further international adventures of one of the most famous dishes of Italian cuisine deserve a separate material. It is only worth mentioning that for the most conservative adherents of a pyrogue diet, there is a closed pizza called Kalzon, which certainly falls under the definition of pastries we discuss. A sweet pie is the fruit of complex geopolitical and trade manipulations as we already wrote above, the pies of the Middle Ages were a strange dish where the meat could be combined with sugar, fruits and overseas spices.
And the more wealthy was the eckage, the more the likelihood of such a meat dessert was. Only in the 15th century did some progress appeared in the division of pies into sweet and satisfying, then the first recipes of custard began to develop and appeared options for fillings from fresh seasonal fruits and dried fruits. But what was a rare ingredient in those times was a wildly expensive sugar that was still not perceived as an everyday sweetener, but was a status additive to food.
The situation began to be corrected only with the onset of the 16th century, with the formation of European colonies in South America and on the islands of the Caribbean. The cheaper sugar supplied from there made it possible to get the full development of confectionery art. Around the same time, the British Queen Elizabeth I, on one of the dinners, tasted a sweet cherry pie, and then began to receive aiva and pear pies as gifts.
The world -famous spicy apple pie was born around the same time. And pumpkin too. Sugar in the old days was formed for storage in such cones all this culinary innovation and boom for developing new recipes allowed pilgrim fathers to bring an enviable culinary baggage to new American lands. And there, with an unprecedented agent, in an attempt to diversify the meager colonist diet, the housewives took up the construction of a new cake school - American.
The American pie-has never yet been baking so much pop-cultural foam from the bakers can you imagine how the hero of a loud blockbuster or a popular series evens a cheburek and at the same time looks like an icon of style? We can, but, unfortunately, in mass culture there are no such examples and I would like. But the agent Cooper from Twin Pixes may well allow himself to be overwhelmed with a cherry pie and be on top.
Or “American pie” - here in general the whole film turns around baking ... Well, almost. And how many comic scenes are built on imprinting a pie or cake in someone’s face-you can’t count at all. And all this culture did not appear from the air, but sailed in the distant year on the Maiflaier ship from England, and then developed already in the territory of modern USA. Here, a huge plus, in addition to the unconditional love of immigrants for the food of their homeland, was a sufficient simplicity of cooking the pie: it did not need a thorough stove, as for baking bread.
That is, it was possible to cook it almost at the stake, and the shallow pans that turned out to be at the disposal of the American housewives have become an excellent form for now quite a compact dish, which, by the way, did not need a lot of filling. The ingredients were used both by the usual and hitherto unfamiliar: the plants that local Indians indicated as filling as a filling.
By the XVIII century, the pies were so firmly entered into everyday life that they were supplied to almost every meal, and any church holiday or fair became an excellent occasion for American housewives to compete in culinary mastery.