battalia pien.

Etymology: < French béatilles ‘titbits, as cocks' combs, sweetbreads, etc. in a pie’; also in convents applied to small pieces of needlework (as pincushions, ‘samplers’ embroidered with sacred subjects) worked by nuns. The latter is the original sense; Cotgrave has the intermediate ‘trinkets or vaine toyes, wherewith finicall people decke themselues; trifles, nifles, odde attires’; whence ‘trifles’ in cookery. Du Cange gives medieval Latin beatillae, which he regards as formed from the French; but its existence in early conventual Latin seems proved by Spanish beatilla ‘a sort of thin fine linen.’ The original sense was evidently ‘small blessed articles,’ the form being diminutive of Latin beātus. The corruption to battalia is due to ‘popular etymology.’Previous versions of the OED give the stress as: baˈttalia pie.