Captain Ginger, the non-fruit or non-vegetable pies I've ever eaten are chicken pies and beef pies {waaay back when I ate beef}. These pies were never home made but were the small pot pies that are sold in the supermarket frozen food sections.

Actually, I {and I bet many other "UnitedStaters"} categorized real pies as dessert only. Store bought chicken pot pies and beef pot pies consist of vegetables, a gravey like sauce, and very little poultry or meat. I never really thought of this quick meal as real pies. Instead, they were "potpies"-the two words running together to refer to something completely different than apple pies, or lemon merangue pies, or other sweet pastry desserts.

However, I suppose with age should come wisdom, or at least knowledge. And I now know that pies don't have to be sweet.

**

This website on the history of pies may be of interest to folks reading this thread: http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpies.html

In addition to having hyperlinks to entries such as Shepherd's pie,
Shoofly pie, Sweet potato pie, Pot pie; Pumpkin pie; Quiche; Boston cream pie; Cape Breton pork pies; Chess pie; Key lime pie, and more,
this page provides excerpts on the history of pies from a number of scholarly sources.

Here are two examples:

"Patissiere...Prehistoric man made sweet foods based on maple or birch syrup, wild honey, fruits, and seeds. It is thought that the idea of cooking a cereal paste on a stone in the sun to make pancakes began as far back in time as the Neolithic age...In the Middle Ages in France, the work of bakers overlapped with that of the pastrycooks; bakers made gingerbread and meat, cheese, and vegetable pies...However, it was the Crusaders who gave a decisive impetus to patisseries, by discovering sugar cane and puff pastry in the East. This lead to pastrycooks, bakers, and restauranteurs all claiming the same products as their own specialties, and various disputes arose when one trade encroached upon the other...Another order, in 1440, gave the sole rights for meat, fish, and cheese pies to patisseries, this being the first time that the word appeared. Their rights and duties were also defined, and certain rules were established...In the 16th century, patissier products were still quite different from the ones we know today. Choux pastry is said to have been invented in 1540 by Popelini, Catherine de' Medici's chef, but the pastrycook's art only truly began to develop in the 17th century and greatest innovator at the beginning of the 19th century was indubitably [Antonin] Careme...There were about a hundred pastrycooks in Paris at the end of the 18th century. In 1986 the count for the whole of France was over 40,000 baker-pastrycooks and 12,5000 pastrycooks."
---Larousse Gastronomique, Jenifer Harvey Lang, editor [Crown:New York] 1988 (p. 777-8)

"The bakers of France made cakes too until one day in 1440 when a specialist corporation, the corporation of pastrycooks, deprived them of the right to do so. The pastrycooks had begun by making pies--meat pies, fish pies...Romans had known how to make a kind flaky pastry sheet by sheet, like modern filo pastry, but the new method of adding butter, folding and rolling meant that the pastry would rise and form sheets as it did so. Louis XI's favourite marzipan turnovers were made with flaky pastry...From the sixteenth century onwards convents made biscuits and fritters to be sold in the aid of good works...Missionary nuns took their talents as pastrycooks to the French colonies..."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble Books:New York] 1992 (p. 242-244) "