Baked Savory Dishes
The savory bake is a solution to a container problem: before tins, a stiff flour-and-fat crust was the vessel, sealing meat and its juices through a long oven and often not eaten afterwards — medieval England called it a coffin. The oven itself is older and communal, a village bakehouse or a domed clay oven, which is why these dishes tend to be festival food rather than daily.
