Food Time Line discusses pie crusts in ancient Rome (http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpies.html) which were essentially flour mixed with oil, and wrapped around a roast, like a crust, more than what I’d call a pie. The usefulness of such a crust would be to seal in the juices. You can see an example of this style of crust in the Spit Roasted Partridge recipe.
There are other pie crusts more like modern ones, where there is butter, or lard, cut into the flour, with or without eggs, and sometimes with spices like saffron. The addition of expensive spices to the pastry indicates the crust was to be eaten and enjoyed, rather than acting as a vessel for the filling.
There are rye flour crusts that are less flakey than wheat crusts, and meant to seal in juices for cooking. In the following case, the crust is likely eaten rather than simply a container.
To make paste short without butter. Take a quart of fine flowre, and put it into a pipkin, and bake it in an oven when you bake manchet: then take the yolks of two or three egges, & a pint of creame, & make paste; put into it two ounces of sugar being finely beaten, and so you shall make your paste short without butter or sewet. In like sort, when you make sugar-cakes, bake your flowre first.
Delights for Ladies 1609
To make a butter paste. Take floure, and seuer or eight egges, and cold butter & faire water, or Rosewater, and spices (if you will) & make your paste and beat it on a boorde, and when you haue so done, deuide it into two or three partes, and driue out the peece with a rowling Pinne, and doe with butter one peece by another, and then folde vp your paste vppon the butter and driue it out againe. and so doe fiue or sixe times together, and some not cut for bearings, and put them into the Ouen, and when they be baked, scrape suger on them, and serue them.
The Good Housewife’s Jewell 1596
To make English pies. Take flour of wheat sifted through a coarse strainer, then make paste that is well greased with butter, the yolks of five or six eggs, & that the paste is well sweetened: then you will make a square pie, then take a quarter of goat or lamb that is very fatty, or some piece of venison that is fatty, & parboil the meat, and cut the piece to fit the pie, then put therein ground mace a little pepper and cinnamon, dates cut into pieces, and candies also cut into pieces, pine nuts, beef drippings, sugar that is sweet enough, and fresh butter, & cover your pie, and put it into the oven to cook: and after put it in the oven basting the cover thereon with egg yolks, and then cast sugar over all, & put in the oven to cook.
Lancelot de Casteau, Ouverture de Cuisine, (1604)
Pastry Recipe #1
(makes 1 pastry shell)
Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup lard (or butter)
2-3 tablespoons cold water
Directions
Measure the flour and salt into bowl. Cut in the lard with a knife or pastry blender.
Sprinkle in water, a spoonful at a time, mixing and working until all the flour is moistened and it forms a ball.
Lay the ball on a lightly-floured surface, and flatten it slightly.
Use a flour-dusted rolling pin, roll the dough until it is about 1/8”, and so ready for your dish.
Pastry Recipe #2
(makes one pastry shell)
To make peascods in Lent. Take Figs, Raisons, and a few Dates, and beate them very fine, and season it with Cloues, Mace, Cinamon and Ginger, and for your paste seeth faire Water and oyle in a dish vppon coales, put therein saffron and salt and a little flower, fashion them then like peasecods, and when ye will serue them, frye them in Oyle in a frying panne, but let the Oyle bee verie hotte, and the fire soft for burning of them
G. Steevens, The Good Housewife’s Jewell, (1596)
Ingredients
1/3 cup water
4 teaspoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
large pinch saffron
1 cup flour
Directions
In a saucepan, bring the water, oil, salt and saffron to boil.
Remove from the heat, and add in all the flour at once, quickly beating with a spoon until dough has formed.
On a floured surface, roll out your dough fairly thin, about 1/8”, and so ready for your dish.
Pastry Recipe #3
(makes a double crust)
To make a pie. First perboyle your flesh and presse it and when it is pressed, season it with pepper and salt whilest it is hot, then larde it make your paste of Rieflowre: it must bee verye thick, or else it will not hold.
The Good Housewife’s Jewell (1596)
Ingredients
2 cups whole grain rye flour
2/3 cup cold butter, or 1/3 cup butter plus 1/3 cup lard
3/4 teaspoon salt
3-4 tablespoons water
Directions
Prepare pie crust by whisking flour and salt together in a medium-sized bowl.
Cut cold butter or lard into small pieces using a knife, until the mixture is the size of peas.
Add water, a spoonful at a time, until the dough barely comes together.
Knead a few times, and form dough into a ball, and flatten it slightly.
Use a flour-dusted rolling pin to roll the dough until it is thin, about 1/8”, and so ready for your dish.