Strawberry Pie

“The kitchen yielded no lemon cakes, but they did find half of a cold strawberry pie, and that was almost as good. They ate it on the tower steps, giggling and gossiping and sharing secrets, and Sansa went to bed that night feeling almost as wicked as Arya.” -A Game of Thrones

Modern Strawberry Galette

Our Thoughts:

Fun Fact! There are numerous historical recipes for strawberry pies, which we were quite excited to discover. However, we have tried the medieval strawberry pie recipe more times than we can count, and were sadly let down. It’s unpleasant to eat, and is just about the ugliest thing we have ever made. We’re embarrassed to even show it to you.

So in this case, we recommend the modern version all the way. It is inherently summery, bursting with fruity goodness and the tang of lemon curd. The thyme pastry adds a depth of flavor to the dish, and offsets the sweetness of the berries nicely, creating an immensely well balanced dessert.

UPDATE: Many readers expressed a desire to see the recipe that flopped. Might I suggest, instead, a strawberry tart recipe that we already know works, at the bottom of our Medieval Fruit Tarts post.

Modern Strawberry Galette Recipe

Pastry Ingredients:

  • 1 1/4 cup flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp chopped fresh thyme leaves
  • 1 stick unsalted, chilled butter cut into pats
  • 3 Tbsp ice water
Mix flour, salt and thyme together, and add the butter, mixing until it resembles coarse meal. You can either use a food processor here, or do it by hand. Slowly add the ice water while mixing, just enough to bring the dough together. Roll out into a small disk, wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes while completing the rest of the recipe.
Filling Ingredients:
  • 3 Tbsp lemon curd
  • 1 pint strawberries, sliced
  • 1 Tbsp honey
  • 1-2 tsp cornstarch
  • 1 tsp fresh lemon juice
  • 1 egg beaten with water for wash
Mix all ingredients together except egg and lemon curd. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured and sugared (raw sugar) surface into about  a 9″ round, and spread the lemon curd over the pastry, leaving an inch around the edge. Organize the strawberry filling onto the lemon curd, and fold up and pinch the sides to contain the filling. Paint the pastry with the egg wash, and bake at 400 F for 25 minutes, or until the center is bubbling.


20 Responses

  1. This looks delicious, and I’ll be anxious to make it when strawberry season arrives! I’m curious, though, what ingredients made the medieval recipes (beside the appearance) so unpleasant?

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  5. This certainly is pretty. I am disappointed that you didn’t include an old recipe too. I cannot help but wonder what would make a strawberry pie unpleasant. You mentioned that the old recipe yields an ugly product. And then I think of the grey wedding cake of an earlier post and am at a loss to imagine what a person could possibly do to a strawberry that would make it look worse than jello-molded cat sick? Please don’t go for conventionally pretty over authenticity. We are the fans of A Song of Ice and Fire, pretty and sweet and familiar are not the only virtues.

    Reply

    • We opted to not include the old recipe for a couple of reasons: In the history of the blog, we’ve never posted a recipe that we weren’t happy with. If it was just a matter of not being pretty enough, we probably would have posted it. But the medieval pie was also entirely unappealing.

      We also weren’t that worried because we already have a strawberry tart recipe that did work, in our Medieval Fruit Tarts post. That one’s a good example of not that pretty, but tastes fine.

      Reply

    • Well, in the book, the girls are quite enjoying the strawberry pie; this leads me to believe it is not at all unpleasant. Plus, ‘pretty’ and ‘sweet’ reflects Sansa’s character, which is probably what the author was going for in mentioning the strawberry pie. The modern recipe posted here is therefore more true to what’s in the book than the medieval recipe would have been, IMHO.

      Reply

  6. Aw, I’d like to hear about the nasty pie, not because I plan to make it, but because I want to know what they would have put in it that made it so nasty.

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  8. I confess I am also curious about the unpleasant strawberry pie. Could you not give us a few hints, after such a teaser?

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  10. I call shenanigans. There’s no way there would be half of this – or, indeed, any – left over.
    My only issue was that my pastry was a little too tender, and therefore my pie less attractive than yours; I ascribe that to my roasting chicken at the same time I was making the pie – the kitchen was too hot. Delicious nonetheless.

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  11. Tried this recipe out tonight, using a homemade blood orange curd instead of lemon because that’s what I had on hand. I think I might’ve had a few too many strawberries in it (is there such a thing, as long as pastry integrity is maintained?), too. But oh my, this is delicious! We usually tend to cut sweeteners in my family because most baked-good recipes are too sweet for our tastes, but this one seems just about perfect, with only that hint from the honey and the curd to complement the strawberries. The savory crust really balanced nicely.

    … and I strongly suspect the only reason there’s three-quarters of it left is that no one else was home.

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  12. I know I’m late to this party. I can’t say what made their old strawberry pie gross, but having made a gross strawberry pie once, how I did it was too much flour. It made it gummy and ugly and icky/

    Reply

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