Saving a great pie favourite
Mark Samworth Chairman Samworth Brothers
Dickinson is credited as the first pie maker to use the distinctive wooden “dolly”, around which the pastry of a Melton Mowbray pork pie is raised. As well as their unique bow shape, a result of baking the pies free-standing, Melton Mowbray pork pies are made with fresh pork, which is naturally grey when cooked, contrasting with the pink hue of other pies whose pork is cured with nitrates. Melton Mowbray pork pies also feature chopped pork, rather than the minced meat used in other types of pork pie. The battle to save Melton Mowbray pies It was in the late 1990s that Samworth Brothers supported the push to safeguard the Melton Mowbray pork pie. Matthew O’Callaghan, then a local councillor
and now Chairman of the Melton Mowbray Pork Pie Association, another key player in the battle, said “A number of us were concerned that Melton Mowbray pies were increasingly being produced with no reference to the traditional recipe and provenance.” Matthew and others ramped up the campaign when they reported one “Melton Mowbray” pie made in Wiltshire (for a very well-known UK retailer), and featuring pink meat, to Trading Standards! After a stand-off, a solution was found. “We had a chap down from DEFRA who suggested we
The Melton Mowbray Pork Pie is one of the UK’s most iconic food products. When the future and integrity of the Melton Mowbray pie looked in jeopardy twenty years ago, it was Samworth Brothers along with other pie devotees that safeguarded its future. The Samworth family and Samworth Brothers have a long association with pork pies. A previous Samworth family business owned the Pork Farms brand. However, their involvement stepped up a gear in 1986 when Samworth Brothers acquired the Leicester pie maker Walker & Son, followed by the purchase in 1992 of Melton Mowbray’s ‘Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe’ and the accompanying Dickinson & Morris brand. A pie maker called John Dickinson had opened the Melton “Pie Shoppe” in 1851. His grandmother Mary
go for the newly introduced EU Protected Names Status,” says Matthew.
Samworth Brothers Chairman, Mark Samworth remembers the years of campaigning.
FBUK Issue 4 28
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