The National Trust Book of Pies by Laura Collister– a golden-crusted delight ★★★★★
The comforting, carb-laden heart of British cuisine gets the treatment it deserves in this handsome, history-steeped recipe collection. In a world increasingly obsessed with spiralisers, superfoods and speed, The National Trust Book of Pies feels like a warm, butter-scented exhale. Laura Collister’s charming volume is more than a cookbook – it’s an ode to the flaky, the hearty and the unapologetically stodge-filled.
With over 50 recipes drawn from the larder of Britain’s past, it makes a persuasive case for the pie as both culinary staple and cultural artefact. Collister, a food historian and National Trust regular, brings the quiet authority of someone who’s spent as much time in archives as in kitchens. Her introduction traces the pie’s evolution from medieval banquet centrepieces to the portable pasties of the working class. What might have been a whimsical preface turns out to be a brisk and genuinely fascinating mini-history, rich in detail and mercifully free of nostalgia-induced fog.
The recipes themselves are arranged with elegant logic: from the meaty – steak and oyster, rabbit and cider – to the sweetly traditional, like treacle tart and Bramley apple. Vegetarians are far from an afterthought, with combinations such as mushroom and chestnut, and beetroot and goat’s cheese offering genuinely satisfying alternatives. Regionality is also a quiet but persistent thread: the inclusion of the Forfar bridie, the Cornish pasty, and the Yorkshire curd tart makes this feel like a journey through Britain’s kitchens as much as its counties.
There’s little flash here – no glossy, over-lit photographs or gimmicky layouts – just calm, unfussy instructions, peppered with historical asides and practical tips. A pie crust recipe is treated with as much reverence as the filling, and rightly so. Collister assumes her readers have hands, not Thermomixes, and the result is delightfully analogue.
If there’s a politics to pies – and surely there is, given their deeply classed, regional history – Collister lets it speak quietly through provenance and preservation. This is a book that treasures things made slowly, by hand, and with a sense of place. In short, The National Trust Book of Pies is a minor triumph: unshowy, deeply comforting, and as solid as a well-baked crust. You won’t just want to cook from it – you’ll want to live in it.
