Eventually we returned home to make dinner, which entailed a rather Dickensian, if not Ankh-Morporkian meat pie

It sounds more pre-Dickensian to me. I think it was in the 16th and 17th centuries that French and English cooks demonstrated their skill by spicing dishes to the point where the type of meat was unrecognizable. Reminded of it not so much by your quantities (of which I know nothing), but the types of spices. People living in relative squalor in Victorian London could never have afforded nutmeg.