A miniature pot pie makes a delicious one-person meal.

       From Rome to Mexico, via England

      Pot pies of one kind or another have appeared on menus around the world for at least 2,000 years, taking on many shapes and flavors. Their popularity throughout America owes much to the British.

      Banquet tables in the Roman Empire often featured pot pies. “Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome” (Dover Publications) contains a recipe for ham cooked with laurel leaves and figs and covered with a crust before baking. As the Romans expanded their empire to the north and east, they exported their taste for meat pies.

      The rascally Romans sometimes baked pies containing live birds, which would fly out to startle dinner guests when the pies were cut. The Italians and British carried on with the joke. Iona and Peter Opie’s “The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes” (Oxford University Press) cites a 16^th century Italian cookbook that included instructions for making pies “so that birds may be alive in them and file out when it is cut up.” That cookbook was soon translated into English. Its presence in English kitchens suggests that “Sing a Song of Sixpence” — the nursery rhyme about “four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie” so that “when the pie was opened the birds began to sing” — was no mere nonsense verse.

      Meat pies became something of a fad among English gentry during the 16th century. One British food writer of that time remarked on the English preference for making them from venison. In her book “Pies: Recipes, History, Snippets” (Ebury Press), Joan Struthers says the term “humble pie” derives from a once-popular English dish made of umbles, a term for the innards of deer. The gentry feasted on pies made with the choicest deer flesh, and their servants tucked into pies made of umbles. Another popular British savory from bygone days was the eel pie.

      The term “pot pie” originated in England, where cooks baked meats in “coffins” that they formed by molding pastry to fit inside a pot or pie pan.

      At a tin mine in Cornwall, England, that I once visited, the tour guide talked about the Cornish pasty (pronounced pahs-tee) as a hand-held convenience food for miners in days past. Wives would bake the semicircular meat pies daily and lower them into the mineshafts at mealtime. The dough for pasty crust is folded over the filling to form a semicircle, with its edges pinched together to seal in the contents and create a thick, tough seam. Miners ate the pasties with their grimy hands, holding them by the seams to avoid soiling the tender part of the crust, and discarding the seams when they finished eating.

      According to the tour guide, Mexicans began to make empanadas, which outwardly are nearly identical to pasties, after Cornishmen sailed to Mexico during the early 1800s to work in the mines. — C.M.

       Cornish pasties look similar to empanadas and are filled with meat and vegetables.

      Investing in Stocks

       Prepare today for your pot-pie-making future with simple recipes for chicken, beef and vegetable stocks.

       BY CHERYL MORRISON

      vegetable, chicken and beef stocks serve as the bases for innumerable soups, stews and sauces. You can make most commercial brands. Some stocks must simmer for hours, but the active preparation time from start to stovetop takes only a few minutes.

       Vegetable Stock

      Vegetable stocks require less simmering time than those that include meat. You can make a flavorful stock using only vegetables, garlic and a sachet of common herbs and spices. Vegetable stock can replace chicken stock to produce delicious pot pies. As with all stocks, you can add or subtract ingredients and adjust their quantities to suit your taste buds. A meatless stock such as this one can provide the basis for countless vegetarian and vegan dishes.

      1 bay leaf

      1½ tsp. fresh thyme leaves or ½ tsp. dried thyme

      3 or 4 parsley sprigs

      3 or 4 whole black peppercorns

      1 whole clove

      1 medium red or yellow onion, peeled

      1 medium leek (including the white bulb and the green stem), rinsed thoroughly

      1 celery rib, leaves included

      1 carrot, peeled

      half a tomato

      2 Tbsp. vegetable oil

      3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

      1 gallon cold water

      1 Tie the bay leaf, thyme, parsley, peppercorns and clove into a double layer of cheesecloth to make a sachet. Chop the onion, leek, celery, carrot and tomato.

      2 In a heavy-bottomed stockpot over medium heat, cook the oil. Lower the heat, add all of the vegetables and the garlic, cover, and cook for about 5 minutes or until the onions become translucent and a little soft but not browned.

      3 Pour the cold water over the vegetables, drop the sachet of herbs into the pot, and turn up the heat to high. When the vegetable stock reaches a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 45 minutes.

      4 Remove the stock from the heat, strain it, and discard the solid ingredients.

       Chicken Stock

      T here are as many variations on chicken stock as there are cooks who make it. Some stock recipes use only chicken, vegetables and a few herbs, simmered slowly in water with a little salt and pepper. Others call for ginger, cloves or other flavorings.

      Bones create the difference between a rich stock and a delicate broth — one that’s made without bones — and the meat and bones can be cooked or fresh. Some cooks choose to use the leftover carcasses of roasted chickens, with meat scraps still clinging to the bones, which can keep in the freezer until

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