Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Janet Clarkson

Quote by Janet Clarkson

“As far as a time-frame for these developments goes, we can probably reasonably deduce that the pie began its life some time before the fourteenth century in those areas of Europe where wheat was grown and pigs and cattle reared.”

Quote by Janet Clarkson

Work

Pie: A Global History

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Janet Clarkson

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Janet Clarkson. more

You May Also Like

“When was the last time you saw on a menu a chewet (a small, round pie of finely chopped meat or fish, with spices and fruit, 'made taller than a marrow pie'), a dowlet (a small pie of particularly dainty little tidbits), a herbelade or hebolace (a pie with pork mince and herb mixture), a talemouse (a sort of cheesecake, sometimes triangular in shape) or a vaunt (a type of a fruit pie)? these words (and more) were once everyday words in a baker's vocabulary. The only conclusion it is possible to draw is that the loss of so many pie-words reflects the loss of the pies themselves.”

“The importance of the pie - once the 'meat and potatoes' of the English - began to slip with the increased cultivation of the actual potato in the nineteenth century. As the nineteenth became the twentieth century, social changes pushed the pie further into decline. The 'great pies' had their last glorious days in the English manor houses of the Edwardian era, before the domestic classes left to fight the First World War.”

“When Soyer said of pies that they are 'one of our best companions du voyage through life', he was referring consumers, but he might just as well been referring to his professional colleagues, for pies have always been enormously useful to caterers and cooks, particularly at events where a large number must be fed efficiently. In modern times this is usually at sporting events such as football games, but the original experts in mass catering were the military.”

“To want to own a restaurant can be a strange and terrible affliction. What causes such a destructive urge in so many otherwise sensible people? Why would anyone who has worked hard, saved money, often been successful in other fields, want to pump their hard-earned cash down a hole that statistically, at least, will almost surely prove dry? Why venture into an industry with enormous fixed expenses (...), with a notoriously transient and unstable workforce, and highly perishable inventory of assets? The chances of ever seeing a return on your investment are about one in five. What insidious spongi-form bacteria so riddles the brains of men and women that they stand there on the tracks, watching the lights of the oncoming locomotive, knowing full well it will eventually run over them? After all these years in the business, I still don't know.”

“The town of Lunenburg was built on a hill running down to a sheltered harbour. On one of the upper streets stands a Presbyterian church with a huge gilded cod on its weather vane. Along the waterfront, the wooden-shingled houses are brick red, a color that originally came from mixing clay with cod-liver oil to protect the wood against the salt of the waterfront. It is the look of Nova Scotia - brick red wood, dark green pine, charcoal sea.”