Pie and Mash - History

History

During the Victorian era, due to the prevailing westerly wind, industrial air pollution tended to be worse in the east of London, with the result that it was settled more by the working classes than the west of the city which was home to higher social classes. The working class were poor and so looked to foodstuffs which were cheap, in plentiful supply and easy to prepare.

The savoury pie had long been a traditional way of preserving food, as well as in its smaller handsized form a transportable meal, protected from dirt by its cold pastry crust. European eels were one of the few forms of fish that could survive in the heavily polluted River Thames and London's other rivers at this time, and so placed in pastry crust became a common worker's meal. Supply was plentiful through to the late 1800s, particularly from the Dutch fishing boats landing catches at Billingsgate Fish Market. Adding cheap mashed potatoes made it a plate-based sit-down meal, and a sauce made of the water used to cook the eels, coloured and flavoured by parsley, made the whole dish something special.

Later, and for a higher price, mutton or cheap minced meat with no added onion could be alternatively ordered as the pie filling. After World War II, as eel supply dwindled and as beef often became cheaper, and in far greater supply overseas, minced beef became the more popular pie filling.

In recent years, the popularity of eel based pies climbed again, as the propensity of people to investigate their roots and origins climbed, and the associated customs and cultures. However, since 2010, it was revealed in a joint-study by Zoological Society of London and the Environment Agency that eel numbers in the River Thames had fallen from 1,500 in 2005 to just 50 in 2010, again leading to a reduction in eel-based pie orders based on commodity price alone.