Plate pies

What could be simpler than’ lining a tin plate with pastry, filling it with fresh-picked fruits and covering the top with the leftover trimmings? Each top design was traditionally used for a different filling because all the pies for the week were cooked on one day - the baking day. The pies were made after the bread, when the oven was cooling. If you had seven identical pies in the larder you could easily get muddled, so you had wide strips for the apple pie, lattice – twisted or plain - for treacle tart, a star for a jam tart, often with jams of different flavours and colours in the different segments. A mince tart would often have a complete cover made with parallel cuts from side to side, and a rhubarb tart was completely covered but for a hole or two.