A Potatoe Pye
"Boyle them and peel them lay them in your pye, take marrow dipt in the yolks of eggs, then bake the rowles of marrow with some cinamon and lay them in slices in the pye with some lemon and orange peel candied and Apricocks and barberries on the tope of the pye before it be lided lay on sugar and buttor, one how or bakes it."
From the Elizabeth Jacob manuscript dated 1654
To get the marrow from the bones, I baked them first but boiling them is generally said to be easier, especially if you lack the tools to dig the marrow from the bones. Everything here is pretty easy to follow though some people may find difficulties in finding barberries. Some substitutes I've seen for these were either cranberries or raisins... I have actually used lingonberries with tasty results. The potatoes were of another matter, I could not decide on them being a standard potato or what could very likely have been sweet potatoes, but I must say that the sweet potatoes were very tasty indeed. (what you may have noticed is that I sliced the potatoes as well, everything being arranged in layers)
If I had been paying better attention while making it up, I would have remembered to add the sugar and butter before adding the lid, this is why the lid is not all that tidy as I had to carefully peel it up uncooked in order to add the missing ingredients before cooking. Despite the mess, it ended up tasting quite wonderful... fairly close to that of an apple pie.
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