A monster Christmas pie served up in Whitby

The Angel Hotel at Whitby was mentioned more than once in the Northern newspapers of the Nineteenth Century and was a place that had a formidable reputation for first class hospitality and quality catering.

It was owned by a Mr And Mrs Weighill and the hotel changed hands over the course of the Victorian era.

This extract from the Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette on New Year’s Eve 1841 describes the gargantuan Christmas pie that had been on offer a week previously.

Whitby

Christmas Pie — Mr and Mrs Weighill, of the Angel Hotel, Whitby, have, with their accustomed liberality, treated their friends and visitors with a most splendid Christmas pie.

It was of an oval shape, studded with the most beautiful devices, and measured 28 inches long and 19 broad, circumference seven feet six inches, and eight inches high.

It contained three stone of flour, 12 pounds butter and suet, two geese, two turkeys, two ducks, four fowls, a brace of grouse, a brace of pheasants, a brace of partridges, two tongues, and a quantity of ham.

It was baked in first-rate style, and is daily undergoing severe operations from their numerous customers.

And this report eighteen years later in 1859 from the Whitby Gazette

Christmas Treat.—The friends and visitors of Mr. Simpson, of the Angel Hotel, have been favoured with their usual Christmas treat of monster pie, weighing twelve stones, and measuring 2 feet 11 inches in length, 1 foot 8 inches in width, and 8 inches in height.

The materials comprised four geese, four turkeys, four pheasants, four grouse, four partridges, four hares, four rabbits, four ducks, sixteen chickens, six tongues, seven pounds of ham, two stones of pork fillets, four stones of flour, ten pounds of suet, and six pounds of butter.

The pie at Mrs Weighill’s, White Horse and Griffin Inn, was formed from the following ingredients.

Thirty-two pounds of flour, eight pounds of butter, fourteen pounds of suet, four geese, two turkeys, four tongues, fourteen pounds of pork fillets, twelve pounds of ham, ten rabbits, eighteen chickens, four partridges and four snipes.

When sent to the bakehouse it weighed nine and a half stones, measured three feet two inches by two feet three inches deep, and was beautifully garnished.

A golden cock crowned the centre.

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