https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/01/461504972/epis...
So was being overweight (look at the art/self portraits and busts) for most of Human existence, the irony being that obesity (and heart disease) is now one of the pretty big indicators of poverty--an attribute of a poor diet, insulin resistance and inflammation from even worse eating habits coupled with limited/no physical activity.
I heard Mat Taibii's guest on a podcast mention this being as common as it in the 21st Century an how its a significant anomaly/reversal for most of History. Hell, I mean even in growing up in the 90s it wasn't as common as it is now there was usually just one 'fat kid' in a group of friends, now its hard to see there being less than 3 in any group of people.
It's tragic how pervasive this is on most of Western Society, the level of dietary ignorance is astonishing, but made worse yet by how addictive they make the processed foods, which in theory if you had some sort daily physical activity to burn those calories would be fine but most don't.
During my apprenticeship when I farmed I used to eat 5000+ calories throughout the day and still managed to be caloric deficient and often lost weight until Sunday (our only day off) when I could eat the same amount of food and properly hydrate with only 1/2 days instead of the 12+ hours of intense manual labour.
This isn't really changed, the only difference is that we have replaced some ingredients (pepper, cinnamon etc) with others (truffle, caviar etc).
It's far easier to find "high end" dishes made with exotic components than plain ones.
Completely enclose it in pastry dough. Especially since it's a pheasant pie, having a pastry layer above the filling is pretty standard to this day for savoury pies (just check… most every meat pie, or a pot pie if you're from the US).