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Cheese Pasties

Recipe from Handout

4 pkg Pie Crust (Pillsbury All Ready) (in other words, four 2-crust pies worth - or you can use empanada wrappers if you can get them)
2 celery stalks, diced (about 2 cups)
1 turnip, small, diced (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 leek, washed and chopped (about 1 1/3 cups)
1 1/3 cup carrots, diced
4 cup cheddar cheese, grated
mace, pinch of
1/4 tsp. black pepper, freshly ground
1 1/2 tsp. prepared horseradish

In a large bowl, mix together all the filling ingredients. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Cut each pie crust into 4 pieces. Place 1/8 of the filling in the middle of each pastry triangle. Pack it down so that it will fit. Fold from the apex of the triangle and halve the base to make a triangular turnover. (If this doesn't make sense, fold it the only way it will hold together.) Seal the edges together. Turn the edges over all around and press with a fork or your fingers to double seal. Cut slits in the top of each pastie so that steam can escape. Bake for 15 minutes at 375, then reduce the heat to 350 and bake for 15 to 20 minutes more, until lightly golden. Let the pasties rest for at least 5 minutes out of the oven before serving.

Source for Recipe Presented

Adapted from Sundays at Moosewood by Hildegarde Stickerin (peri-oid)

Notes and additional versions

Obviously, this is not a period recipe, but an adaptation of a traditional British recipe for Cheese and Onion pasties.
For instance, see this version from Helen's British Cooking Site

Traditional ethnic recipes should not be assumed to date back prior to the 18th century, so although pasties are period, a cheese and onion pasty cannot be shown to be any more period than a Cornish pasty. Nonetheless, this is an extremely delicious peri-oid dish which provides a little more variation for vegetarians who might otherwise eat nothing but mushroom pasties.

Cheese and Onion/Leek Dishes I Could Document

Tart on Ember Day

Cheese and Onion/Leek Dishes equally peri-oid

Leek and Mustard Tarte (Traditional French)

Other Cheese Dishes with A Little Similarity

For Tarts owte of Lente
Pepys 1047 p. 27
Take nesche chese and pare hit and grynd hit yn a morter and breke egges and do therto and then put yn butter and creme and mess all well to gethur put not to moche buttr ther yn if the chese be fatte make a coffyn of dowe and close ht above with dowe and collor hit above with the yolkes of eggs and bake hit well and sue hit furth.

Flampoyntes (A pork & cheese pie, decorated with pastry triangles) (Another version)
Forme of Cury - Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. Curye on Inglish: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth-Century (Including the Forme of Cury). London: For the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 1985.
192. Flampoyntes. Take fat pork ysode. Pyke it clene; grynde it smale. Grynde chese & do ŝerto wiŝ sugur & gode powdours. Make a coffyn of an ynche depe, and do ŝis fars ŝerin. Make a thynne foile of gode past & kerue out ŝeroff smale poyntes, frye hem & put hem in ŝe fars, & bake it vp & c.

A good Cheese and Bacon Pasty
Ein Buch von guter spise Recipe 44 (Translation by Alia Atlas)
44. Ein gut gebackenz ( A good pastry) Rib kese. menge den mit eyern und scharbe gesoten spec dar zu. mache ein schoenen derben teyc . und fülle den kese und die eyer dor in. und mache krepfelin. und backe sie in butern oder in smaltze. noch der zit. und gib sie warm hin.
Grate cheese. Mix it with eggs and boiled small pieces of fatty bacon thereto. Make a fine dough (possibly freshly made as opposed to sourdough) and fill therein with the cheese and the eggs. And make small cakes and bake them in butter or in fat, near to the time (they are to be served), and give them out warm.

William Rabisha, The whole Body of Cookery Dissected
A Made Dish of Parmysant
Take a Grater and grate half a pound of Parmyzant, then grate as much manchet, and mince some Tarragon together with Horse-Raddish; season this with almost a handful of Carraway Comfits; put to it a little brisk Claret-wine to moisten it over, then dish it in a small dish, from the middle to the brim, in parcels as broad as your knife; garnish it with carraway Comfits, Horse-Raddish and Tarragon; send it up as the last dish of your mess or messes, with Mustard and Sugar.

John Partridge, The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin
To Make Lumdardy Tartes
Take Beets, chop them small, and put to them grated bread and cheese, and mingle them wel in the chopping, take a few Corrans, and a dish of sweet Butter, & melt it then stir al these in the Butter, together with three yolks of Eggs, Synamon, ginger, and sugar, and make your Tart as large as you will, and fill it with the stuff, bake it and serve it in.

William Rabisha, The whole Body of Cookery Dissected
How to Fry a Dish of Cheese
Take a quarter of a pound of good Cheese, or Parmysant, and grate it and put to it a little grated bread, a few Caraway seeds beaten, the yolks of as many eggs as will make it into a stiff batter, so it will not run, fry it brown in Butter, and pour on drawn Butter with Claret wine when they are dished.

p. 232, 365 Shakespeare (Rabisha, Partridge)
Madge Lorwin. Dining With William Shakespeare. 1976: Atheneum.

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Updated September 9, 2002

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