Morning Harvey sorry I missed your post. Thanks for posting that beautiful old lambsfoot again; always like looking at that.
The pies I post pictures of are
always pork pies. There pork cooked in a hot water crust pastry and are eaten cold. They 'can' be eaten warm but this is rare and some butchers will also make a beef version. You will also find versions with added ingredients like pork and apple or pork and cranberry or pork and stilton, but if you want to test quality you eat just a standard pork pie. You can buy them mass-produced in supermarkets but the finest are to found in family butchers, with many butchers staking their reputations on the quality of their pork pies. People like myself will travel the realm seeking out the finest pies.
The British consume over £1billion worth a year of the little muckers; and many argue that the pork pie is actually our national dish.
You'll hear much of a town called Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire but only because they've made the most noise. In reality the finest pies are to be found in the counties of Lancashire and Yorkshire, but there are slight regional variations; Lancashire pies generally have more jelly, and people will argue about how you eat them. Do you eat them alone or with pickles? Or mustard?
There generally about two-thirds fist size but can be mini (about 2 bites worth) up to huge stand pies the size of a small car wheel. People have even had wedding 'cakes' made of them.
It so serious we even have a championship.
https://www.britishpieawards.co.uk/
We have a lot of ballyhoo in our mainstream news media about vegetarian/vegan pies being included but that seems to be a London urban thing. Where I live no one in their right mind would touch a 'vegan' pork pie.
Hot pies are something different and come in myriad forms. The world capital of the hot pie is generally considered to be the town of Wigan in Lancashire (the town of my birth), with locals actually known as 'pie-eaters'.
https://harrysbarwigan.com/national-pie-eating-competition/
