Meat pies are Australia’s national fast food choice, with Australians eating 270 million every year
THE meat pie is Australia’s fast food favourite just as fish and chips are to Brits, hamburgers to Americans, tacos to Mexicans and pizza is to Italians. Here’s a history of how we came to love them.
IT is a cultural icon that Australians have worshipped for more than a century at the altars of the service station, the quaint bakery, the footy oval and the friendly local pub — the humble meat pie.
Now its reputation will be elevated to even loftier heights, thanks to an exhibition dedicated to the grand history of what is widely considered to be Australia’s national dish.
Former NSW governor Dame Marie Bashir opened “The meat pie: Australia’s own fast food” exhibition at Leichhardt Library as part of statewide celebrations for History Week 2015.
WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?
Bread and pies were part of ancient Egyptian, Green and Roman diets, but the meat pie first arrived in Australia with the gold rush in the 1850s.
Eccentric English migrant William Francis King made and sold pies to ferry passengers at Circular Quay, and he would race on foot to the Parramatta ferry wharf to supply them with a second helping.
The classic Australian meat pie — a single serve of pastry with a meat and gravy filling — was once baked fresh daily for local pie shops, but today most are sold frozen in supermarkets.
The meat pie has now become Australia’s iconic fast food, in the company of Britain’s fish and chips, America’s hamburger, Mexico’s tacos and Italy’s pizza.
FIRST PIE SHOPS IN SYDNEY
George Sargent and his four pastry chef brothers migrated to Australia in the 1880s, and by 1886 George and his wife Charlotte were operating their first bakery in Glebe.
After their deaths in the 1920s, their business Sargents survived under new ownership and concentrated purely on manufacturing pies from the 1960s.
By 1963, Sydney’s wholesale market was producing approximately 60 million pies every year.
Four large pie manufacturers supplied over 90 per cent of the market, running fleet trucks full of fresh pies from their factories to retail outlets.
Gartrell White was based in Newtown and supplied over a third of the Sydney meat pie market.
Sargents in Darlinghurst, Scotts in Redfern and Irelands in Surry Hills each supplied Sydney with about 10 million pies.
The Sargents brand name fell out of use when it was bought out by Scotts, who also bought Irelands — the new brand became Scotts and Irelands.
The historic name of George and Charlotte’s business was restored when the brand was sold and moved to a new factory in Colyton in 1992, becoming Sydney’s largest pie manufacturer.
Today, there are three major manufacturers — Sargents at Colyton, Hannah’s at Ultimo and Garlo’s at St Peters.
EASY AS PIE FOR GARLO’S FOUNDER
HARRY’S CAFE DE WHEELS
In 1938, Harry Edwards opened a pie cart in Woolloomooloo.
He fought in the war until he was discharged, injured, and purchased an old army ambulance to sell pies at sporting events around Sydney.
In 1945, he converted a caravan to a pie cart, which had wheels as council regulations required food carts in Woolloomooloo to move at least one foot each day.
When the police tried to move Harry on, the wheels were mysteriously missing from the cart.
By the time Alex Kuronya acquired the cafe in 1979, Harry’s was internationally famous.
Michael Hannah of Hannah’s Pies now owns the brand, and has established ten Harry’s franchises across Sydney.
FAMOUS PEOPLE WHO HAVE EATEN THEM
Harry’s Cafe de Wheels has attracted a host of high profile celebrity customers over the years with its cult status on the Australian food scene.
The pie-makers even attracted another international food icon - Colonel Sanders of KFC Chicken himself.
Harry’s has served its famous pies to Frank Sinatra, Sir Richard Branson, Russell Crowe and Brooke Shields.
Home-grown fans include Jimmy Barnes and Cold Chisel, Olivia Newton-John, Pat Rafter and Kerri-Anne Kennerley.
Elton John and Billy Crystal also enjoyed Harry’s pies when they were in Sydney, while millennial Disney star Joe Jonas also popped by for a pie during a recent press tour.
Harry’s pies also gained national attention of an entirely different kind when disgruntled The Bachelor contestant Laurina complained about eating “a dirty street pie” for dinner with 2014 Bachelor Blake Garvey.
PIE FACTS YOU SHOULD KNOW
Australians eat 270 million meat pies every year, up from 60 million in the 1960s.
The meat pie is traditionally served hot in a paper bag over the counter, accompanied by tomato sauce.
Pie-making is now largely automated for both small and large pie-makers.
Patties Food Ltd is now Australia’s largest pie-maker, and their Bairnsdale factory in Victoria is the largest pie factory in the world.
Former first grade rugby league star Sean Garlick swapped his boots for oven mitts at the end of his career to become Australia’s first celebrity gourmet pie-maker, setting up Garlo’s Pies with his younger brother Nathan.
THE BASIC PIE RECIPE
Here is a basic 1960s recipe for producing one dozen commercial meat pies.
Bottom pastry
5oz pumpable shortening (margarine)
1lb flour
0.6oz salt
½ pint water
For a large scale pie-maker, the shortening would be delivered in a tanker.
Top pastry
6oz Pastrex (edible oil and fat)
12oz flour
0.4oz salt
¼ pint water
Pastrex is a mixture of animal and vegetable fats and oils specially formulated for pie-making.
Meat filling
1lb meat (beef, mutton, lamb)
0.5 oz seasoning
1 pint water
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