The Guinness World Record For The Most Expensive Meat Pie

The first pies were believed to have been made by ancient Egyptians around 6000 B.C., according to What's Cooking America. The pies were made with barley, wheat, rye, or oat, stuffed with honey, and baked with hot coals. Pies were created as a way to preserve meat and other ingredients since people didn't have storage containers or baking dishes back then, per Ferguson Plarre's Bakehouse. The first pies were referred to as coffins, and their crusts were very thick, sturdy, and inedible because they were baked for long periods of time. Historians also believe that the Greeks first made what we know as pie pastry today.

We've come a long way since then, and some of the best savory meat pies around the world include pot pie from the United States, shepherd's pie from England, pirog from Russia, sfiha from Lebanon, pastilla from Morocco, and meat pie from Australia (via Taste Atlas). Although some of these were historically considered peasant dishes, in 2005, one chef took on the challenge of flipping the idea of a meat pie on its head by making the most expensive one ever and earned a Guinness world record.

The most expensive meat pie was sold at the Fence Gate Inn in Lancashire, United Kingdom on November 14, 2005, according to Guinness World Records. The meat pie was made with about £500 ($870 in 2005) worth of Japanese wagyu beef filet from cows that were actually given massages, and the sauce contained two bottles of vintage 1982 Chateau Mouton Rothschild wine, valued at about £1,000 each (then $1,740). The meat pie also included rare, expensive winter black truffles, French Bluefoot mushrooms that ran £200 per kilogram ($348 per 35 ounces in 2005), and Chinese matsutake mushrooms that cost £500 per kilogram (then $870 for 35 ounces) and are so valued that guards watch over them. 

The meat pie was finished with an edible gold leaf priced at £100 (then $174) for each sheet, bringing the total cost to £8,195 ($14,260 in 2005). Luckily, the group of eight that bought the pie split the cost, making it just £1,024 (then $1,781) for one slice. The mastermind behind the most expensive meat pie, head chef at Fence Gate Inn Spencer Burge shared, "We wanted to create a real luxury dish using the highest quality ingredients money can buy. It's taken a few attempts to get this right, but we've finally got there," (via Lancashire Telegraph).