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 1877. Two hundred years after it was opened, the Melton & Oakham Waterways Society was formed, with the aim of returning the navigation to a navigable waterway once more. The first proposals to link Melton Mowbray to the canal network were made in 1780, following on from the success achieved by the Loughborough Navigation and the Erewash Canal. The intent was to make the River Soar navigable to Leicester, and the River Wreake navigable to Melton. Although nothing came of these first proposals, public meetings were held in 1785, and the civil engineer William Jessop surveyed the route in October.