A Florendine of Oranges at Mad for Marmalade

There was a time when pies were baked in very sturdy shells called "coffins". They didn't need a pie plate with sides to support them; the crust supplied all the structure that was needed. It wasn't even necessarily meant to be eaten.

Sometime after the 1600s in Europe, a dish called a Florendine or Florentine emerged. It was a pie with a finer puff pastry crust partly supported by the dish. It could be filled with meat, fish, cheese, fruit or vegetables. Over time, it became customary to embellish it with a fancy top crust. (This glossary gives several definitions as the word changed meanings over time.)

At the Culinary Historians' Mad for Marmalade event last Saturday, Fort York volunteer historic cook Mya Sangster led a workshop to create a "Florendine of Apples and Oranges" from an antique recipe similar to this one.

In keeping with the day's marmalade theme, the pie was filled with cooked apples and shreds of candied orange peel.


I was one of the six or so people who spent an hour assembling and decorating the pie, shown here before cooking. The decorations are entirely made of puff pastry; they were stamped out, carved and formed by hand, then stuck on with egg whites brushed on with a feather. It was cooked in the Fort's 200-year-old wood-fired oven, which is always unpredictable. Therefore you'll notice a few singed leaves in the top photo, but the result was delicious.

Thanks to Mark D'Aguilar for the photos!