The REVOLTING things inside Victorian Penny Pies (Extraordinary 19th Century Street Food)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- The Victorian pie was cheap street food for a reason. What was hidden inside? Find out how pies were sold and what piemen (who struggled to earn a living) filled them with - some it meat of such a dubious quality, that a customer who found themselves eating one over seasoned with pepper really should have questioned why, and put health before sating their hunger with cheap penny pies.
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▶️ Victorian documentaries (Playlist):
• Victorians
▶️ Edwardian Documentaries (Playlist): • Edwardians
▶️ Worst Jobs in Victorian History (Playlist): • Worst Jobs in Victoria...
▶️ Victorian workhouses (Playlist):
• Victorian Workhouses
▶️ Criminal Past (Playlist): • Criminal Past
▶️ American Slums and Tenements (Playlist):
• American Slums and Ten...
Credits: Narration - markmanningmedia.com
CC BY - A baker is carrying a tray of pies, The crystal palace from the great exhibition by Wellcome Collection; Goose pie by whinger; Homemade mincemeat by Stuart Caie; Mincemeat pie and plum pudding by Boston Public Library; Mmm... mini pies by jeffreyw; Pie chips and baked beans by oatsy40; Pieman by Allan Lee; Tudor mincemeat pie by LearningLark; Close up pouring gravy into a gravy boat, Woman hands laying out pears in a grocery store, Fish and chips sign outside london pub by Videvo.com
CC BY-SA - Fish potatoe pie by Matyáš Havel; Pies in market lane by Frankula; Steak and onion pie by Alpha
#VictorianFood #VictorianFoodDocumentary #FoodVictorianEra #EatingVictorianFood #VictorianLondon #VictorianDocumentary #VictorianLondonDocumentary #VictorianEraDocumentary #VictorianLife #19thCentury #VictorianEra #HistoryDocumentary
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▶ Victorian documentaries (Playlist):
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▶ Edwardian Documentaries (Playlist): th-cam.com/play/PLLSSHJuYZhj4GekxnJ9dF4np2LakeH1LA.html
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▶ American Slums and Tenements (Playlist):
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what was the charcoal used for if I may ask. did the pie men use it to cook their pies or keep them warm?
For me, “Sweeney Todd” will always have the last word on meat pies in 19th-century London.
Sweeney todd is set in the 18th century Georgian era
That's the first thing I thought of when I saw the title! 🔪🥧⚰️
😂😂😂 right
Meat pies are good but Sweeney tod never had a bakery so maybe he brought pies from markets .
In the story and thats. all thats all it is a fiction story.
Sweeny had a partnership with the lady nexr door who baked pieso@Maxtyur
We had 2 batches of rhubarb in our back yard growing up and my mom used to make the best pie out of it. She also used to pour sugar on a plate, chop up some stalks and give us that as a snack.
My grandmother used to do the exact same thing. She was a great cook.
yum
We always had a rhubarb patch at the bottom of our garden and our Mother who was a pastry chef by profession used to make the most delicious rhubarb pies and soufflés.. Rhubarb leaves are poisonous however and must never be used of course. Interesting fact.. Although it's eaten as a fruit, rhubarb is actually classified as a vegetable and not a fruit!!
I did that as a child twisted paper full of sugar and a stick of rhubarb
I wonder what Henry Mayhew would think of today's differences between rich and poor. Thank you for making the past come to life.
Remember the fishmongers who went round the pubs? Last I saw one was 1998. Mussels, winkles, fish sticks etc.
Omg yes!! I remember visiting pubs in Kent & they still did this in the 90s!
This has become one of my favorite channels. I work at a grocery store... full time. Which doesnt seem like it would be too bad.. but honestly its exhausting. I do drive up and go shopping and average 22,000 steps a day pushing a heavy cart the whole time, often at a jogging or even running pace. I work circles around everyone else there. I take home right around $500 a week after taxes.. sometimes $525 or even $540 on a really busy week if I stay late and get some overtime. I work the early shift.. meaning I clock in at 4am and if I want to have time to walk my dogs and eat some breakfast, I have to be up by 2:25 am. Keep in mind that $2000-2100/month net income. My rent + gas/sewer/water is around $1705/month, electricity bill is around $50, car insurance is $80, i spend $32/month on gas, $35/month on dog food, $20 for streaming services which i rotate every month or 2, $50 for my cell phone... that leaves me right around $100 on a bad month.. maybe as much as $200 on a good month to survive on. Yet I make too much to get any government assistance despite being an "essential" worker. $100 a month to cover all my food, toiletries, household cleaning supplies, new shoes when they get worn - which is often when you do 12 miles of walking a day. I dont have mich, but I have a clean apartment and usually manage to keep myself fed.. barely (its hard on $3 a day... especially with eggs over $6 a dozen... that really makes it so much harder to stay well fed when you're broke.. i remember when i could get 5 dozen for $6 and have plenty of protein for the week right there😢.) But watching these videos makes me feel mich better about myself and my situation. As rough as it is working yourself to exhaustion to barely scrape by, at least its not Victorian London!
Even in my childhood in the 1960's pies were horrible filled with gristle poor meat and pastry you could repair your shoes with yuk .Thanks for this upload............
Get a supermarket pork pie these days, 50% pastry (full of lard) 50% filling which is mostly fat and fillers. Not much has changed for the people with little money.
You forgot the over peppered content which is a still widespread nowadays
If people truly have very little money for food then carbs/fat is the most "bang for your buck" so to speak. Course in the West very few actually go hungry which is why here "poverty leads to obesity".
This makes me appreciate what we have today. There was a local restaurant, mid priced, that made a wonderful mincemeat pie with a tasty crust and no garbage inside.
Regarding what goes into "fast foods" my father used to say that rissoles and ar****les were one and the same thing.
"Tossing" the pieman, has an entirely different connotation in my neck of the woods.
Surely that's the only way to get a creamy warm crust though
Aye capn'... Indeed! BTW It's your turn in the barrel tonight! 😂
Indeed, and you"d want more than a lousy old pie for payment!
Always interesting and entertaining. Happy New Year. Thanks!
Thank you so much! Much appreciated 😊
It's still possible to get some experience of the traditional London pie by visiting one of the few pie and mash shops still operating in London, such as Goddard's in Greenwich. The shops used to be associated with jellied eels and the 'liquor', used as alternative to gravy, was reputedly made from the fluid the eels were bolded in. The information that the fish pies originally purveyed by piemen contained eels explains a lot.
There are some in East London selling hand-made pies with liquor.
@@FactFeast Oh, do you know where thereabouts? I asked and was told that all the pie n mash shops were gone.
Wanstead, leytonstone, Walthamstow..lots still around...
What does eel taste like? The thought of it is disgusting. No offense
Great place, that. Still not sure about the liquor though....
... Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart. (GG)
Victor eyed the glistening tubes in the tray around Dibbler’s neck. They smelled appetizing. They always did. And then you bit into them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn’t know it had got. (MP)
“ … a man who could sell Mr Dibbler’s sausages twice could sell anything”, said Victor. (MP)
“… when you sell sausages you don’t just hang around waiting for people to want sausage, you go out there and make them hungry. And you put mustard on ‘em.” - Sir Terry Pratchett O.B.E.
😁🎩👌
The gourmet 'meat of an identified species' pie has stayed with me!
Started reading Pratchett. Stopped eating street food.
I sincerely hoped to see a CMOT Dibbler mention in the comments.🤓 🥧🎩
Just found this channel and loved listening to this, will have to listen to more
Welcome! Lots more history like this on the channel.
Yet again, a amazing job Fact Feast! Topics and content are always so amazing and filled with so much knowledge. Thank you for all your dedication and hardwork producing great videos for everyone to enjoy. Hello from the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia Canada.
Hi there! Thank you so much. Nice to know you like the history. Thank you for watching regularly 😊
A hard graft having to make them and sell them while trying to make them for as little as possible. I love a good pie, but prefer the sweet ones, as even today, who knows what cheap cuts of meat by in them lol. As always a great narration, always so interesting!
Thank you mamasinger.
I really love this channel, please keep doing these videos, your voice is very soothing and appropriate for this type of content.
Thank you so much! More to come.
Standards dipped after the Georgian era when Mrs Miggins pie shop could attract aristocrats and conniving butlers inside.
I found this to be very interesting, I never knew these facts about British pies before. I knew only a little about British pies 🥧, but I hope to get to England to try some someday. This channel has some of the best history videos I’ve ever seen, I highly recommend them! 😊
Super! I’m glad you found this useful. Pies are really popular in Britain. Thank you very much.
@@FactFeast you’re most welcome!
Missus Miggins Pie Shop!!
I kind of fancied her lol
What an excellent video! The visuals along with the narration. The way its described, I can see it perfectly in my head. In real life, when people are talking, they think that I am not listening because I am visualizing in my head the words that I am hearing....its hard to understand without using my "minds eye".....these videos are perfect for that. I can see still photos but the narration lets me shape what I am hearing to fit. Its excellent.
Great work on this one!
That’s great! Its nice to know the narration worked for you. Thank you.
great as always
I have a suggestion: can you make an episode about these journalists and philanthropists who went to the paupers describing their lives? How did this approach develop, why, and who are the great people? Is there a connection with J.J. Rousseau? Sure with Charles Dickens. But how did upper class people start to be empathic and interested in the lives of the paupers?
It’s that time of the evening when we are taken back in time by FactFeast & the history of the traditional British pie. Thanks
Pie selling - a risky business for both pieman and their customers. Thanks Bob!
@@FactFeast That’s a loaded statement right there (pun definitely intended)
@@FactFeast it was probably the same for the ice cream sellers too back then
Now underneath the shop, it's true,
Where the bodies tumbled through,
There lived a little widow who loved Sweeny Todd.
She made her living selling pies
Her meat pies were a treat!
So full of meat and such a size!
For she was getting her meat
from Mr Sweeny Todd the barber...
Mrs Mooney has a pie shop 🥧 🐈
...but them pussycats is quick
Does a business but I've noticed something weird, lately all her neighbors cats have disappeared......
Of Street Piemen, have the book in front of me. Ahh yes Critlings. 2lb of 'Critlings' (being the refuse left after boiling down the lard) and some treacle to make the mince-meat look rich.
This is a great listen. 🥧🥧
Do You mean Chitterling's. Pig intestines cleaned and cooked. platted or pressed. Briddy 85 year old all sold when I was a lad.
In Egypt they sat around the table and talked in pieraglifics
😅
The Door dash ad at the beginning of this video was appropriate...😅
New Fact Feast episode! 🎉
In Seventeenth Century London there was sold to the poorest on the streets a 'Bow-Wow Pie'. The contents were never stated but the appellation suggested what it might have contain'd.
Haha I had some pie people in my family..my granny always entered her apple pie in the state fair and some times she'd sell them and she made meat pies too and it was always chicken and beef and sometimes turkey or any kind of wild game my grandpa would trap and she'd sell them too and nobody had to worry about miss mildreds pies but we're in the country in the states but i have her recipes and no fido or figaro is called for..😂
Buy one, get one at the Soylent Green Bakery!
Marie Callender pot pies are good, especially the chicken and brocolli one. The gravy in that one was so good. Of course they stopped selling it. The other ones aren't bad, compared to this video.
I agree, my mother loves Marie Callender’s pot pies, I’d rather have that then the pies from England🎉
Watching this at 6am here in London and now I want a hot pie 🥧 😊
we have come a long way from a penny for a pie
NZ$6.60 for most meat pies at my pie shop in my provincal backwater
Mrs Loveitt pies. Surplied by Sweeny Todd the barber.☠
Thank you sir for your wonderful cultural documentary channel. Honestly street food , or restaurant fast food . Some are uncean , or reuse cooking oil , they keep from long time cause fatal diseases. Homemade food is best choice . I gathered main information about topics you mentioned briefly here it’s victorian penny pies were common street food . Colin spencer relates how piemen would hawk their wares around pubs of London. If pieman wants Toss would he sells pie for penny . There are article written in 2013 titled ( worse than horse meat victorian fast food horrors exposed). According to historian dr Rosalind cran . Adding doggy ingredients to all sorts of food stuff from pies to oatmeal , was routine in mid 19 th century.story of Sweeney Todd demon barber who turns his murdered customers into meat pies , came in that decade and played public fears about practice. Some tea on sale actually contained no tea at all merely dust . Says crone with persuading house servants to give them used tea leaves , which dried out and resold as fresh tea . Sometimes food adulteration was deadly . Historian lists case where children at pauper institution became sick and died . Coarseness of ingredients caused children terrible diarrhea as she says . Growing awareness of scale of adulteration in uk eventually led to public anger and 1860s saw first modern food standards legislation which became stronger and , more effective as century progressed . Best wishes for you your dearest ones .
We would go to an old cake shop when I was young. We would take our own carrier bags and get cakes well iced fingers and Chelsea buns. There was flies in the window and they were stale. Ewwww
Stale flies, ewwwww.
Those weren't currents in the chelsea buns, lol.
That must've been a gamble for you 😂 like is this a raisin, a current or a manky dead fly on the bun? 😖
The flies went into the eccles cakes giving rise to them being described as dead fly buns...
Fun fact. If you weigh a whale at a whalewheigh station, where do you weigh a pie? Over a rainbow. *sings :somewhere, over the rainbow, weigh a pie
Thanks, now I can never not hear that.
Bravo, you monster 👏👏👏
Oof!
lol 😂
I can see the piemen putting amost any kind of meat and other ingredience in those dubious pennypies, like rat, cat, dog, hmmm i wonder if peopel used to complain of missing pets during festivals and other speciaal occasions when the piemen where out and about selling large amounts of their cheap fast food. ewww
Yellow there…
Hmmmmmm yum yum delicious… no fam not the Sweeney Todd’ pies they’re just totally disgusting I’d say but yeh pies are good… I eat the innards only and ditch the pastry.. sweet or savory I ain’t fussed nor bothered… I see now that one can get vegan pie… I tried one of these so called healthier pies and I gotta say they’re not all that bad… my only criticism is that pastry and mostly potatoes does not a pie make hahah
Pie mash and gravy… yes yes yes manna from the gods is that… rhubarb pie sounds absolutely lush… imma gonna gather some rhubarb and try my hand at making one actually..
Thanks for this pie related content… its truly pie in the face - more in the gob good stuff hahah
Cheerio ;)’
I have eaten eel many times in Sushi restaurants and I love it. It tastes very similar to catfish. I absolutely hate octopus, the way the suction cups pop when you bite into it.
I love squid. Does octopus taste different?
Yucky, yucky yuckness! 😂
Yeah! 1st🎉
Can't possibly be any more revolting than some of the disgusting things in the Standard American Diet, not to mention all the toxins.
Make me a pie fact feast.. my friend 😊
Strawberry preferably
Strawberries were popular with Victorians. Not sure they put them in pies as much as other fruits. Thanks firecracker!
Never had a bad pie🙂
Tom Thumb pulled out a plum. Sing a song of six pence...
The real C. M. O. T. Dibblers of Ankh-Morpork.
Don't imagine there were many vegans around in those days
Actually there were more than you think considering most people couldn't afford meat back then
@@Badgerlustor gluten intolerant
more then one thinks, meat was a rare luxury poor people could not afford.
Probably not vegan, but certainly vegetarian, though not by choice!
@@alisonbrowning9620 not really, meat was fairly common enough that you'd be able to eat it atleast once a week but this all depends on where you are, who you are and what specific decade your in. In places like the U.S, saloons would straight up offer free food on the assumed condition you would buy beer. I imagine England had similar options but not the same options as their American counterparts.
Victorian Street Pie gravy was yummy !
You must be very old 😮
Is that where two up in Australia came from.
I love Pies so hope this won’t put me off!
Dibbler’s Pies are the worst. Ask Terry Pratchett, he knows.
Eyyyyy their dunnie be calling em rats 🐀 coffins ⚰️ for a giggle 😂
Four of fish and finger pie
A pork pie will sit atop anything
Will that have been London?
Yes, this is about pie sellers in London.
British cuisine and their women’s faces made their men the best sailors in the world.
Well said 👍
😂😂😂😂
Tossing the pie man😂
I wouldn’t eat that pie!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Thank you Miji. It’s much appreciated 😀
The Pies today are just as bad. You don't know what goes into them, might be prime beef, or nextdoorrs dog. Woof woof.😅😅😅😅
Only cheapest ones, some lovely pie shops about now.
Makes you wonder how many of those penny pies were made of cats, dogs, and....people meat.
I wonder about the Kababs more than the pies.
@@EJisAretedefinitely.
Take a shot every time the word pies is mentioned.
Homity pie. Dorset.
What's homity? At first I thought you said hominy, which is common in the American South.
Simple Simon met a Pieman going to the Fair ...m
You,forgot,the,brain,scrappings
Haha why does this put me in the mood to rent sweeny todd and does a cutie pie still count as a pie ?? hey Johnny depp even in a movie about a homicidal butcher with a thing for pies is still one haha dang it fact feast you would put me in the mood to order a pizza pie and a movie night glad my town still has a dvd rental place..but hum a choice sweeny todd or fact feast..binge your both deliciously fun 😂
I went to a racecourse with my family when I was 12, they sold hot meat pies, they were so delicious and tasty. sold from a van. best I've eaten. I'm a vegetarian have been for 30 years, but I remember those pies.
thank you. rhubarb is poisen the cooked leaves
I wish I knew the English currency
I know some (thruppence-three pence-three cents...I think)
What would a shilling be?
Half a crown?
The ' Old ' British Currency 240 pennies = One Pound £. Sovereign gold coin = £1. Coins / = 1/4 pence. 1/2 pence. 1. 2. 3.6.pence. Shilling = 12 pence. 2 Shillings. Half a Crown = 2 Shillings & 6 Pence. Paper Notes = 10 Shillings. 20 Shillings ( £1 ) & £5. Did that mix you up?😊
Twelve pennies in a shilling. Two shillings were also known as florins. Two shillings and six pence were half a crown. Many years ago there were four farthings to a penny.
In 'old money' there were 12 pennies to a shilling (or bob) and 20 shillings to a pound. There were also farthings (quarter pennies) and halfpennies. Five shillings were a Crown, so two shillings and sixpence was half a crown.
A shilling was twelve pence = one twentieth of a pound. Half a crown was 2 shillings and six pence = one eight of a pound. The crown was out of use by victorian times. The last beautiful half crown coin only went out of use in 1970
Jeffrey Damher made some pies.😮...love your work facts!!...(none of the above is true)..except the love of facts. ❤
Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler
I wonder if it was the beginning of a Sandwich?
One penny then equals to today's 1 pound ? or 50p?
I been binging for a bit and haven't seen a thing about opium dens.
They did not exist back the times you educate about?
Sweeny Todd.
Victorian Era 1837-1901.
Uuuuuummmmmmm PIE!
What about tossing the salad man?
British food is absolutely disgusting 200 years later too.
The North Koreans have brought out a new, Vegetarian, just add boiling water snack. It's called "Not Poodle". 🐕😋
Found my first ever brits only video
Ultimate in English cuisine. Lucky for "English cuisine" that their colonized "subjects" followed them home post collapse of empire to gift the country actual edible foods. Anyone for a curry!
Add to that the advent of foreign travel allowing a wider culinary experience to British tourists.
It was rats droppings and people mostly 😂😂
No worse then american food that is worse like we the people treated like dogs
Always interesting and entertaining. Happy New Year. Thanks!
Thank you very much and a Happy New Year!