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 per year in the 1830s. Cargoes benefited from the connection at Syston to the very successful Leicester Navigation. The Oakham canal had never been so profitable, paying dividends of around 3.8 per cent, and lack of water during the dry summer of 1844 resulted in it closing for five months. When the Midland Railway sought to build their Syston and Peterborough Railway, the Oakham company negotiated, and the railway bought the canal on 29 October 1847, with a view to closing it and using part of the bed for their line. The effect on the Melton Mowbray Navigation was dramatic.