Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie on The Hairpin!

Last month, for National Pie Day (not to be confused with International Pi(e) Day, coming in March), Elizabeth and I had a piece on one of my most favorite sites on the interwebs, The Hairpin! It's an illustrated history of the fabled "4 and 20 Blackbirds Pie" which appears in the Mother Goose rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence. This piece, which features some of my mose favorite illustrations from Elizabeth yet (those blackbirds!), was also the reason that I made that rather odd Stargazy Quail Pie (so THAT explains it!). You can visit the original post on The Hairpin, and read all the lovely and funny (and spam, unfortunately) comments here, but it's also posted below (though sans comments), in case you don't want your web surfing experience to turn into a "diverting Hurley-Burley".

Though there are a few days that claim to be THE “Day of Pie”-- the U.S. House of Representatives recognized “Pi Day” on March 14th, and a second somewhat dubiously decreed “National Pie Day” on December 1st, according to the American Pie Council, today, January 23rd is the actual “National Pie Day.” It was probably chosen so that people have at least one thing to look forward to after the pie-promises of Thanksgiving and Christmas have faded, and you’re left cold and hungry in the depths of mid-winter.

In honor, of this, we present an illustrated investigation and recipe of the legendary 4 and 20 Blackbirds Pie.

We all know the nursery rhyme, Sing A Song of Sixpence, from the classic Mother Goose. This is the first verse of the rhyme as it first appeared in print in the mid-1700s.

Sing a Song of Sixpence,
A bag full of Rye,
Four and twenty
Naughty boys,
Bak’d in a Pye.

In its subsequent publication in 1780, these additional verses were added and the “naughty boys” were replaced by blackbirds.

When the pie was opened,
The birds began to sing;
Was not that a dainty dish,
To set before the king?

The king was in his counting-house,
Counting out his money;
The queen was in the parlor,
Eating bread and honey.

The maid was in the garden,
Hanging out the clothes;
There came a blackbird
And snapped off her nose.

It’s entirely unclear how those twenty-four devious boys all turned themselves into blackbirds, but one cannot know the ways of the devil. We do know that somehow they managed to and are thus transformed for the rest of all history. Though “four and twenty” may seem a random number to us now, it is actually the most frequently appearing number in Mother Goose, representing, perhaps the 24 hours in a day, or a double dozen, 12 being a fabled number in religion and mythology. “A bag full [of Rye]” may have been an actual culinary measurement, like the teaspoon and tablespoon of today. And though there’s no rye mentioned, blackbirds inside a pie could be a reference to this recipe containing live birds, from the 1549 Italian cookbook Epulario or The Italian Banquet by Giovanni de Roselli, translated into English in 1598.

TO MAKE PIE THAT THE BIRDS MAY BE ALIVE IN THEM, AND FLIE OUT WHEN IT IS CUT UP

Make the coffin of a great Pie or pasty. in the bottome whereof make a hole as big as your fist, or bigger if you will. let the sides of the coffin be some what higher then ordinary Pie, which dome. put is full of flower and bake it, and being baked, open the hole in the bottome and take out the flower [flour]. then having a Pie of the bignesse of the hole in the bottome of the coffin aforesaid. you shal put it into the coffin, withall put into the said coffin round about the aforesaid pie as many small live birds as the empty coffin will hold besides the pie aforesaid. And this is to be done at such time as you send the Pie to the table, and set before the guests: where uncovering or cutting up the lid of the great Pie, all the Birds will flie out. which is to the delight and pleasure shew to the company and because they shall not bee altogether mocked, you shall cut open the small pie and in this sort tart you may make many others, the like you may do with a Tart.

This type of surprise pie, or coffin, as they were called, was likely actually made, being related to a genre of Medieval food called solteties, which used illusions in sugar (sound familiar?) and other stunts to impress guests. The live bird pie is later referred to in 1723 by John Nott, cook to the Duke of Bolton, as an antiquated practice with the aim that the birds in flight would extinguish the candles lighting the dining hall and create “a diverting Hurley-Burley amongst the Guests in the Dark”!

Though this sort of wild Hurley-Burley sounds like the makings for a perfect Saturday night, it may not currently be culturally acceptable to insert small life birds into desserts as aforesaid. In lieu of sending you on a wild pigeon chase, here are some ways you can put a bird on it in the modern day:

-DO use a pie bird! A ceramic funnel, usually in the shape of a bird, which you insert in the middle of a pie to let steam and juices escape.

-DO create birds out of paper or modeling clay, attach them to skewers and insert them into the pie.

-DO cut bird silhouettes out of paper and place them on the pie crust, then dust the entire crust with powdered sugar, letting only the bird shapes remain un-sugared.

-DO (If you dare) make a Stargazy Quail Pie! Recipe here. WARNING: Not for vegetarians or the faint of heart.

-DON’T mold blackbirds out of pie crust dough and bake them in the pie. You will end up with deranged Calvin and Hobbes snowmen-type figures (the 24 naughty boys return!) when the butter melts. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Sources: The Annotated Mother Goose by William Baring-Gould via the American Folklife Center

Stargazy Quail Pie

Consider this more of a historical experiment than a culinary one. But don't get me wrong, it was indeed a culinary EXPERIMENT--my first time cooking quail, and a somewhat rare occurrence of cooking meat; I'm just not sure how much I can endorse this as an enjoyable pie to eat. But I've deemed 2013 the year of the savory pie, so I guess there was no other way to start but to dive right in...

I initially set out to make a "modernized" version of 4 and 20 Blackbirds Pie from the Mother Goose nursery rhyme (more on that soon here!). Since it would be rather difficult and probably not culturally acceptable to catch small live birds and stuff them inside a pie, I decided instead, well, to use dead ones. Some suggested cornish game hens and others suggested quail, so after doing a little research in a few cookbooks and on the ol' internet, I found two recipes-- one for a Medieval Game Pot Pie from Alton Brown and another for Stargazing Quail Pie from the British Pieminister Cookbook. Both require stuffing whole birds and baking them in a crust, their little legs poking through. Eeeep!

Stargazy Pie is a Cornish dish, traditionally made with pilchards, or sardines. Their heads are baked sticking out of the crust, giving the appearance that they're gazing at the sky, but this practice also allows the oils and juices from the fish to flow back into the pie, making it moist. The pie originates from the small fishing village of Mousehole in Cornwall and is usually served on Tom Bawcock's Eve, celebration the heroics of fisherman it's named after. The story, dating back to the 16th century, goes that one Christmas the town was nearing starvation, as storms had been raging on the coast, grounding all the fishing boats. On December 23rd, the brave Bawcock ventured out to see, scored a catch, and made it safely home, thus saving Christmas and the entire village population. The whole catch, which included 7 different types of fish, was then said to have been baked into a pie. As I child, I remember reading about this story in the children's book The Mousehole Cat.

Along with the usual fish, stargazy pie is a hearty affair, generally containing heaps of onions and potatoes. I ended up combining the two recipes I found, using quail, but instead of opting for the Middle Eastern-inspired filling that Pieminister uses, I made an adapted version of Alton Brown's dried fruit stuffing for more of a mincepie flair. In the end, the flavor was great, but I honestly had a bit of a mental block--the tininess of the quail made me a little uncomfortable, as did their little legs sticking out of the crust (more crustgazy than stargazy)! Like I said, this was more of a historical exercise than a culinary one--it did make me think why some recipes persist and some fall out of favor. It didn't suit my taste, but perhaps those less squeamish than me will just eat this up.

Stargazy Quail Pie
An amalgamation of recipes by Pieminister and Alton Brown

Ingredients
Nothing-in-the-House pie crust
4 Tblsp. olive oil
1 large onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
6 oz. mixed dried fruit (apricots, figs, and crystalized ginger)
1/4 c. pine nuts, lightly toasted
1 small bunch of thyme, leaves picked and chopped
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. paprika
zest of 1 lemon
2 Tblsp. lemon juice
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. sea salt

1 1/2 Tblsp. unsalted butter

4 quails (defrosted, if frozen)

sea salt

Directions
1. Prepare the Nothing-in-the-House pie crust as per the directions. Chill dough at least 1 hour. Once chilled, roll out 1/2 of pie crust and fit into a 8 or 9-inch greased and floured deep casserole dish. You can choose to roll out the top-crust now and refrigerate it flat, or roll it out once you've prepared the filling. Either way, you should put both the remaining crust and the pie pan in the fridge while you prepare the filling.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Heat 2 Tblsp. olive oil in a pan, add the onion and garlic and cook over very low heat 15-20 minutes until onions are translucent and golden. Transfer to a medium-sized bowl and add dried fruit, pine nuts, thyme, spices, and lemon zest and juice. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.

3. Heat remaining 2 Tblsp. olive oil and butter in a frying pan or skillet large enough to hold the quails. Rinse birds, then place them in the pan and season them with salt and pepper. Fry for about 5 minutes on each side until golden. Remove them from the heat and stuff loosely with filling.  

4. Put remaining filling into the bottom of the pie crust and make 4 spaces to hold the quails. Put them in so that their legs are sticking up and arrange the filling around them so they stay upright.  Roll out the other crust half if you haven't already. Cut 4 slits in the crust for the quail legs and place on top of the pie. Pull legs through and flute crust to seal. Brush with an egg wash and bake for 40-45 minutes until the crust is golden and the birds are cooked through. Serves 4.