Meat pies

A meat pie encases chopped meat or mince in pastry and bakes it. Fillings often include offal and lower-value meats such as mechanically recovered meat; pies may be baked in dishes lined and sealed with pastry — steak and kidney pie is the classic — while pasties are the folded-pastry-case variant, like the Cornish pasty. Pastry insulates the filling, so baking profiles must bring the centre fully to a safe temperature; moist gravy fillings demand hygienic preparation and rapid cooling to avoid Bacillus cereus and Clostridium perfringens hazards. Compositional standards govern meat content, and hot-held pies need strict temperature control.