Pork pie when the pie is cooked, traditional recipes specified that clarified butter or a hot pork stock was poured into the pie after baking. This would set when cool, filling the gap between meat and pastry and preventing air from reaching the filling and causing it to spoil. Commercial makers use a 6% solution of gelatin at between 80 and 90 degrees Celsius, added into the pie immediately after baking. The Melton Mowbray pork pie is named after Melton Mowbray, a town in Leicestershire. While it is sometimes claimed that Melton pies became popular among fox hunters in the area in
Melton Mowbray Navigation recorded as 1730 in the census of 1801. The main cargoes were coal, supplemented by barley, oats and wheat, granite, lime, wool and manure. Coal traffic amounted to 16,781 tons in 1797, although of this, 77 per cent was carried up the canal, and the rest was carried down the canal, so it appears that coal was resold to the Leicester market when prices fluctuated. The Oakham Canal, when it opened in 1802, was never a success financially, but generated extra traffic for the Melton Mowbray Navigation, with around half of the coal passing up the canal continuing on to