A pork pie is a traditional British meat pie. It consists of roughly chopped pork and pork jelly sealed in a hot water crust pastry. It is normally eaten cold as a snack or as part of a meal.

There are two main types of pork pie generally available in commercial outlets:

The common pie uses cured meat. Often produced in moulds or form, it gives the outside of the pie a very regular shape and the inside filling a pink colour. It is easier, simpler and cheaper to produce in volume, and hence the more common choice for commercial manufacturers.

The Melton Mowbray pork pie is named after a town in Leicestershire. Melton pies became popular among fox hunters in the area during the late nineteenth century.

The uncured meat of a Melton pie is grey in colour when cooked; the meat is chopped, rather than minced. The pie is made with a hand-formed crust – this style of production gives the pie a slightly irregular shape after baking. As the pies are baked free-standing, the sides bow out, they are not vertical like mould-baked pies.

Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig (Sus domesticus), which is eaten in many countries. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC.

Pork is eaten in several forms, mostly cooked. Pork can also be processed into different forms, which may also extend the shelf life of the product, with the resultant products being cured (some hams, including the Italian prosciutto) or smoked or a combination of these methods (other hams, gammon, bacon or pancetta). It is also a common ingredient in sausages. Charcuterie is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products, many from pork. However, by some definitions, "pork" denotes only fresh pig meat.^{[citation needed]}

The pig is one of the oldest forms of livestock, having been domesticated as early as 5000 BC. It is believed to have been domesticated either in the Near East or in China from the wild boar. The adaptable nature and omnivorous diet of this creature allowed early humans to domesticate it much earlier than many other forms of livestock, such as cattle. Pigs were mostly used for food, but people also used their hides for shields and shoes, their bones for tools and weapons, and their bristles for brushes. Pigs have other roles within the human economy: their feeding behaviour in searching for roots churns up the ground and makes it easier to plough; their sensitive noses lead them to truffles, an underground fungus highly valued by humans; and their omnivorous nature enables them to eat human rubbish, keeping settlements cleaner.

A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients.

Pies are defined by their crusts. A filled pie (also single-crust or bottom-crust), has pastry lining the baking dish, and the filling is placed on top of the pastry, but left open. A top-crust pie, which may also be called a cobbler, has the filling in the bottom of the dish and the filling covered with a pastry or other covering before baking. A two-crust pie has the filling completely enclosed in the pastry shell. Flaky pastry is a typical kind of pastry used for pie crusts, but many things can be used, including baking powder biscuits, mashed potatoes, and crumbs.

Pies can be a variety of sizes, ranging from bite-size to ones designed for multiple servings.

The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys, in particular at sea, was initially solved by taking live food along with a butcher or cook. However, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small ships, reducing the time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in early armies adopting the style of hunter-foraging.

Michel Roux (born 19 April 1941) is a French-born chef and restaurateur working in Britain.

Born in Charolles, Saône-et-Loire, Roux moved to Paris with his family after the war, where they set up a charcuterie (delicatessen). At the age of fourteen he became a patissier (pastry chef), and later followed his elder brother Albert back to Paris to work as a chef.

When Albert moved to London, Michel again followed him, and in 1967 they opened their first restaurant, Le Gavroche, which became the first restaurant in Britain to gain one, two and then three Michelin stars. In 1972 they opened the Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire.

Michel was awarded the Meilleur Ouvrier de France for patisserie in 1976 and an honorary OBE alongside his brother in 2002 and is the recipient of The International Center in New York's Award of Excellence.

In a poll of UK chefs carried out by Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine in 2003, Michel and his brother Albert were voted the most influential chefs in the country. Michel Roux's son, Alain Roux, currently runs the Waterside Inn in Bray.

Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.

Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music. Yet Mingus avoided categorization, forging his own brand of music that fused tradition with unique and unexplored realms of jazz.

Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. In creating his bands, Mingus looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, but also their personalities. Many musicians passed through his bands and later went on to impressive careers. He recruited talented and sometimes little-known artists whom he assembled into unconventional and revealing configurations. As a performer, Mingus was a pioneer in double bass technique, widely recognized as one of the instrument's most proficient players.