I've written about the evolution of the wedding cake tradition and how it reaches all the way back to ancient Rome, when a loaf of hearty bread was broken over the bride's head.
But the story of wedding cake isn't a straight line from Roman bread to the tiered cakes we know today.
Along the way, weddings featured some rather interesting dishes—including Bride's Pie.
If you're imagining a sweet dessert covered in frosting, think again.
Bride's Pie was a savory wedding dish, and its history gives us another glimpse into how wedding food and wedding traditions have changed over the centuries.
17th Century Wedding Cake
Bride's Pie was a savory pie associated with weddings and wedding celebrations. Unlike today's wedding cake, it wasn't necessarily a dessert. Historical recipes could contain a rather remarkable assortment of meats, seafood, fruits, nuts, spices, and other ingredients.
And before we look at one of those recipes, there's something important to keep in mind. People in earlier centuries cooked differently from the way we do today. They used more of the animal, preserved foods in different ways, and combined ingredients that might seem unusual to modern diners.
In other words, don't read an old Bride's Pie recipe expecting to find something resembling today's chicken pot pie.
You may be in for a surprise.
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| Medieval Kitchen |
One of the oldest surviving printed recipes I found for a Bride Pye appears in The Accomplisht Cook, a cookbook first published in 1660 by Robert May.
That puts this particular recipe in the 17th century, during the Historical Age, which falls within the Early Modern period in European history.
The cookbook's language is also very different from modern English, and some of the ingredients and culinary terms require a little explanation.
Here's the recipe:
To make an extraordinary Pie, or a Bride Pye of several Compounds, being several distinct Pies on one bottom. Provide cock-stones and combs, or lamb-stones, and sweet-breads of veal, a little set in hot water and cut to pieces; also two or three ox-pallats blanch’t and slic’t, a pint of oysters, slic’t dates, a handful of pine kernels, a little quantity of broom buds, pickles, some fine interlarded bacon slic’t; nine or ten chestnuts rosted and blanch season them with salt, nutmeg, and some large mace, and close it up with some butter. For the caudle, beat up some butter, with three yolks of eggs, some white or claret wine, the juyce of a lemon or two; cut up the lid, and pour on the lear, shaking it well together; then lay on the meat, slic’t lemon, and pickled barberries, and cover it again, let these ingredients be put in the moddle or scollops of the Pye.
Now let's translate some of that into modern terms.
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| Medieval wedding cake was known as Bride's Pie |
Bride’s Pie Recipe 1685
To make an extraordinary Pie, or a Bride Pye of several Compounds, being several distinct Pies on one bottom. Provide cock-stones and combs, or lamb-stones, and sweet-breads of veal, a little set in hot water and cut to pieces; also two or three ox-pallats blanch’t and slic’t, a pint of oysters, slic’t dates, a handful of pine kernels, a little quantity of broom buds, pickles, some fine interlarded bacon slic’t; nine or ten chestnuts rosted and blanch season them with salt, nutmeg, and some large mace, and close it up with some butter. For the caudle, beat up some butter, with three yolks of eggs, some white or claret wine, the juyce of a lemon or two; cut up the lid, and pour on the lear, shaking it well together; then lay on the meat, slic’t lemon, and pickled barberries, and cover it again, let these ingredients be put in the moddle or scollops of the Pye.
What's in a Bride's Pie?
The ingredients in this particular recipe certainly aren't what most of us would expect to find in a wedding dessert.
It calls for:
- Veal sweetbreads
- Cock's stones and combs
- Ox palate
- Oysters
- Dates
- Pine kernels
- Broom buds
- Pickles
- Bacon
- Chestnuts
- Eggs
- Wine
- Lemon
- Barberries
- Butter
- Nutmeg and mace
Some of those terms need explaining.
Sweetbreads aren't bread at all. The term refers to certain organ meats, traditionally the thymus or pancreas of an animal.
Cock's stones refers to the testicles of a rooster.
Cock's combs are the fleshy crest on top of a rooster's head.
Ox palate is the roof of the animal's mouth.
And yes, people really did eat these things.
Nothing went to waste.
That may be one of the biggest differences between this historical recipe and the food served at many modern weddings.
Why was it called Bride's Pie?
The name itself tells us that the dish was associated with the bride and the wedding celebration. Bride's Pie belongs to a much older tradition of giving certain foods special meaning at weddings.
Food wasn't simply something placed on the table because people were hungry. Wedding foods could symbolize:
- fertility
- prosperity
- abundance
- good fortune
- the joining of two families
Bride's Pie also had an interesting connection with wedding guests. In some traditions, something unusual was hidden inside the pie, and finding it could supposedly bring good fortune to the unmarried person who discovered it.
That idea may sound familiar.
It is another example of how wedding customs often overlap, change, and borrow from one another over time.
From Bride's Pie to Wedding Cake
So where does Bride's Pie fit into the story of wedding cake?
It isn't quite accurate to say that Bride's Pie simply became the modern wedding cake. Wedding cake has a much more complicated history, with traditions involving ancient Roman wedding bread, later English wedding customs, bride cakes, fruitcake, icing, and eventually the elaborate tiered cakes we recognize today.
But Bride's Pie is part of the larger story of special foods served at weddings.
And that's what makes it interesting.
Wedding celebrations have always involved food. What changed was the food itself.
Ancient Romans had wedding bread. Later generations had wedding cakes and bride cakes. Bride's Pie brought a savory dish into the wedding celebration.
Eventually, sweet, elaborately decorated cakes took center stage.
What Did Bride's Pie Taste Like?
That's a question I can't answer from experience, and I'm not sure I want to volunteer for the experiment!
The combination of oysters, bacon, dates, chestnuts, organ meats, spices, lemon, and wine would certainly produce a very different flavor from today's wedding cake.
If you're planning a historical wedding reenactment, however, a modernized savory pie inspired by the old recipes could make an interesting addition to the menu.
You don't necessarily have to recreate the original recipe ingredient for ingredient. A savory meat pie using period-inspired ingredients could capture the spirit of the tradition without requiring your wedding guests to eat rooster anatomy.
And your guests might thank you for that.
The History of Wedding Food
One reason I enjoy researching wedding traditions is that they rarely follow a simple path. We tend to think of traditions as though they've always existed in their present form. Wedding cake is a perfect example.
Today, we picture a beautiful tiered cake covered in icing and decorations. We cut it, take photographs with it, and sometimes save the top tier for a future anniversary. But that cake is the result of centuries of changing customs.
Bride's Pie is one of the more unusual stops along that journey. It reminds us that wedding food hasn't always been sweet, white, or covered in flowers.
Sometimes it was a very elaborate savory pie filled with ingredients that would make a modern wedding caterer raise an eyebrow. And honestly, that's one of the things I love about history.
You never quite know what you're going to find when you look beneath the traditions we take for granted.