This was one of the last Eating Chaucer dishes and was served at the Pazzo Books arrivederci Roslindale party.

For many a pastee hastow laten blood
and many a Jakke of Dovere hastow sold
That hath been twice hoot and twice cold

Prologue to the Cokes tale

Cooks would let blood out of pies – drain meat pies of the good stuff, the blood and gravy, to re-use – and sell what Chaucer referred to as Jack of Dovers; pies that have been reheated. No less of a pie authority than Thomas More referred to these as “An Evil pye twyce bakken”.

We had a lovely group of small pies – they were more or less identical to the ones served with mortreux except the fruit was diced together more completely (this was the only real failing of that first pie – the figs, apples, pears and currants didn’t always blend evenly).

The meat pies are pastez nourroys which might mean Norse Pies or nourishing pies – they seem Norse to me, but not especially nourishing. There is no recommendation as to how to cook them, but different recipes for Norse pies from the Le Menagier de Paris
(1393) and other collections have them fried in lard. Yum. This recipe is from The The Viandier of Taillevent
, a recipe collection from the early 14th century generally attributed to Guillaume Tirel.

“Pastez nourroys – Prenez chair cuite bien menue hachiee, pignolet, raisin de Corinde et frommage de gain esmie bien menu, et ung pou de sucre et ung petit de sel.”

Take diced meat, well cooked, pine nuts, currants, crumbled rich cheese, a bit of sugar and a little salt.

We used lamb and aged cheddar – the latter because it seems properly English and dates to at least the middle of the 12th century. Half of them we fried in lard, and half we baked twice. The ones fried in lard, eaten hot, were a sybaritic, out of body experience. If you haven’t fried anything in lard lately, it is a velvety pleasure you will not soon forget. As they cooled, they seemed to revert to their constituent parts, but hot and bonded together in their meat/fruit/cheese cocoon…wow. The twice baked pies were, indeed, evil.

The larded pies are around the outside, the evil pies are in the center.

Online editions of cookbooks mentioned:

Le viandier de Guillaume Tirel dit Taillevent
Le ménagier de Paris, traité de morale et d’économie domestique composé vers 1393