Pierate - Pie Reviews: What is a Pie? - Explaining the Height to Width Ratio

Wednesday 18 August 2010

What is a Pie? - Explaining the Height to Width Ratio

What is a pie? Listen in. We'll tell you what a pie is right here.

Peter's are a major manufacturer of pies in the UK and it was decided to investigate the difference between what they call a pie and what they call a slice. I've heard some people say that a slice is a type of pie. Let me show you they are quite different! There is an important quality of pies that we have mentioned before on this site, the height to width ratio. A slice and pie differ quite strongly in this area and this determines how much filling you get with your pastry. Hence it is not an arbitrary difference, they won't taste quite the same!

In the red corner we have a Peter's Mexican Chilli Beef Slice weighing in with a width of 15 cm and a megre height of just 2.75 cm. This gives a paltry height to width ratio of about 5.5 to 1. However this was a very nice product, considering it wasn't a pie. Its important to note that other pastry products aren't bad but the best of them will never be as good as the best pies.

Representing pies we have a Peter's Meat and Potato Pie. This has a shorter width of 10 cm and stands tall at 4.5 cm. This gives a beautiful height to width ratio of nearly 2 to 1. This gives the optimum pastry to filling ratio that we've been talking about here on The Pierate Ship. Just look at the picture of the two products side be side. This pie was delicious providing a lovely mellow flavour after the spicy slice. It was also very good value as Peter's normally are.

Peter's are one of the most popular manufacturers of pies in the UK and thus their standards are embedded in the mainstream pastry products market. Therefore they give an excellent bench mark for where the average man on the street draws the line between a pie and a slice.

The line will of course blur at some points but why risk it? Just grab yourself a healthy height to width ratio and don't make the school boy error of getting a slice by mistake!