Shepherd's pie

Shepherd's pie

Shepherd's pie made with lamb served with peas, a common accompaniment
Alternative names	Cottage pie, hachis Parmentier
Type	Meat pie
Place of origin	Britain and France
Main ingredients	Mashed potato with minced meat
Variations	Cumberland pie, Shepherdess pie
Food energy (per serving)	Template:If first display both
[[:b:|Cookbook: Shepherd's pie]]

Shepherd's pie, cottage pie, or in French cuisine , is a savoury dish of cooked minced meat topped with mashed potato and baked, formerly also called Sanders or Saunders. The meat used may be either previously cooked or freshly minced. The terms shepherd's pie and cottage pie have been used interchangeably since they came into use in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, although some writers insist that a shepherd's pie should contain lamb or mutton, and a cottage pie, beef.

The term "cottage pie" is first recorded in 1791. "Shepherd's pie" is later, first recorded in the nineteenth century. Some modern variations are vegetarian or vegan, using substitutes for meat and dairy ingredients.

Definitions and preparation

Potato-topped pies on sale in shop window

Vegetarian and beef shepherd's pies for sale

Some people in Britain call the pies made with beef "cottage pies" and those with lamb, "shepherd's pies". The major supermarkets do so, and the distinction is backed by some reference works. Other authorities and cooks and food writers including Prue Leith, Caroline Waldegrave and John Ayto regard the two names as completely interchangeable. Jane Grigson's 1974 recipe for shepherd's pie uses beef, and mentions that it is "sometimes called" "cottage pie".

In Australia, Canada, and the US, "shepherd's pie" is a common term for a dish of any meat covered in mashed potato. Food retailers in those countries apply the term "shepherd's pie" to beef-filled pies as well as those containing lamb.

To make a basic shepherd's pie, fry onions until soft then add meat to cook through. Add herbs and stock and leave to simmer. Meanwhile boil and mash potatoes. Put the meat mixture into an ovenproof dish and cover with the mashed potatoes, then bake in the oven.

History

Cottage pie

The term was in use by 1791. Parson Woodforde mentions "Cottage-Pye" in his diary entry for 29 August 1791 and several times thereafter. He records that the meat was veal but does not say what the topping was. The dish was known under a different name in the early 19th century: in 1806, in her book A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Rundell published a recipe for "Sanders", consisting of minced beef or mutton, with onion and gravy, topped with mashed potato and baked as individual servings. Sanders or Saunders could also have a filling of sliced meat. According to Jane Grigson in English Food, mincing originally meant chopping something with a knife. "But with the first mincing-machines, prison, school and seaside boarding house cooks acquired a new weapon to depress their victims, with watery mince, shepherd's pie with rubbery granules of left-over meat."

In 20th-century and later British usage the term cottage pie has widely, but not exclusively, been used for a dish of chopped or minced beef with a mashed potato topping. Grigson records that that to make the dish go further, some recipes put in a bottom layer of potato before adding the meat and top layer. The meat may be raw or previously cooked; the latter was at one time more usual. Well into the 20th century the absence of refrigeration made it expedient in many domestic kitchens to store cooked meat rather than raw. In the 1940s the French-American chef Louis Diat recalled of his childhood days, "when housewives bought their Sunday meat they selected pieces large enough to make into leftover dishes for several days". Modern recipes for cottage pie typically use fresh beef.

Shepherd's pie

Pie with mashed potato topping, lightly browned on a plate, served with broccoli and cauliflower florets

Shepherd's pie in an English restaurant

A recipe for shepherd's pie published in Edinburgh in 1849 in The Practice of Cookery and Pastry specifies cooked meat of any kind, sliced rather than minced, covered with mashed potato and baked. In the 1850s the term was also used for a Scottish dish that contained a mutton and diced potato filling inside a pastry crust. Neither shepherd's pie nor cottage pie was mentioned in the original edition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management in 1861. In 1898 a recipe for a vegetarian shepherd's pie was published in The Vegetarian Messenger by Florence Nicholson.

More recently "shepherd's pie" has generally been used for a potato-topped dish of minced lamb. As with beef, it was commonplace in the days before refrigeration to cook a Sunday joint to last in various guises throughout the week. Dorothy Hartley quotes a traditional verse, "Vicarage mutton", showing not only the uses to which the joint was put, but also the interchangeability of the terms "shepherd's" and "cottage" pie – that the latter can be made with mutton rather than beef:

     Hot on Sunday,
     Cold on Monday,
     Hashed on Tuesday,
     Minced on Wednesday,
     Curried Thursday,
     Broth on Friday,
     Cottage pie Saturday.

Hachis Parmentier

The dish is named after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who popularised the potato in French cuisine in the late 18th century. It is documented from the late 19th century. It is usually made with chopped or minced lamb or beef; in either case it may be made with either fresh or left-over cooked meat. (The modern English term "hash" derives from the French , meaning food "finely chopped".)

In some recipes a layer of sauté potatoes is put in the cooking dish before the meat filling and mashed potato topping are added. A more elaborate version by Auguste Escoffier, named , consists of baked potatoes, the contents of which are removed, mixed with freshly-cooked diced beef, returned to the potato shells and covered with sauce lyonnaise.

Variations

There are no universally agreed ingredients for any of the variants. The recipes cited in the table show the varieties of titles and ingredients recommended by cooks and food writers from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, South Africa and the US.

Cook/writer	From	Name of dish	Meat used	Fresh or left-over	Template:Refh
Mary Berry	Britain	Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh
Mère Biasin	France	Hachis Parmentier	Lamb	Left-over boiled
Paul Bocuse	France	Hachis Parmentier	Beef, pork, veal, chicken, preferably mixed	Left-over
Robert Carrier	US/Britain	Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh
Felicity Cloake	Britain	Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh, chopped, not minced
Jean-Pierre Coffe	France	Hachis Parmentier	Beef	Left-over boiled, mixed with fresh calves' liver
Elizabeth Craig	Britain	Shepherd's pie	Lamb	Left-over casseroled
Rocco DiSpirito	US	Shepherd's pie	Beef	Fresh
Fannie Farmer	US	Cottage pie	Pork	Left-over
	Britain	Shepherd's pie	Beef or lamb	Fresh
Michel Guérard	France	Hachis Parmentier	Veal sweetbreads and duck gizzards	Fresh
Mark Hix	Britain	Shepherd's pie	Beef and lamb	Fresh
Graham Kerr	Britain	Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh
Tom Kerridge	Britain	Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh
Prue Leith	S. Africa/Britain	Shepherd's pie or Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh
Jean Paré	Canada	Hachis Parmentier	Beef	Fresh
Marguerite Patten	Britain	Cottage pie	Lamb	Left-over
Henri-Paul Pellaprat	France	Hachis Parmentier	Beef	Left-over
Anne-Sophie Pic	France	Oxtail Parmentier	Beef	Fresh
Gordon Ramsay	Britain	Shepherd's pie	Lamb	Fresh
Jay Rayner	Britain	Cottage pie	Beef and pork	Fresh
Gary Rhodes	Britain	Shepherd's pie	Lamb	Fresh
Michel Roux, Jr.	France/Britain	Hachis Parmentier	Lamb	Left-over roast
Madame Saint-Ange	France	Hachis de bœuf au gratin	Beef	Left-over
Keith Sarasin	US	Cottage pie	Lamb	Fresh
Delia Smith	Britain	Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh
Delia Smith	Britain	Shepherd's pie	Beef	Fresh
Martha Stewart	US	Shepherd's pie	Beef	Fresh
John Torode	Australia/Britain	Cottage pie	Beef	Fresh
Antoine Westermann	France	Hachis Parmentier	Beef	Fresh or left-over braised
Anne Willan	Britain/France/US	Hachis Parmentier	Beef	Fresh

Similar dishes

Fillings for other pies with a mashed potato topping are numerous, and include artichoke hearts and red peppers; black pudding; chicken and spinach; chorizo; curried chicken; duck; rabbit; salmon; salt cod; turkey and ham; and flaked white fish with shrimps in a white sauce.

Other pies with non-pastry toppings include:

Name of dish	Place of origin	Description	Template:Refh
Cumberland pie	England	Pies of this name exist in two versions: traditional Cumberland pies, still served in Cumbria, have a pastry case, but others have a lamb or beef or pork-sausage filling covered by mashed potato topped with cheese and breadcrumbs.
Empadão	Portugal	Meat, often veal, stewed in a tomato-based gravy and layered several times between mashed potatoes. Poultry or fish is sometimes used instead of meat
Escondidinho	Brazil	The name, indicating "hidden", describes the way sun-dried meat is covered with a layer of manioc purée. The dish often includes cheese and chicken; cod is sometimes used instead of beef.
Hamburger pie	United States	Adds vegetables (often frozen or tinned) to the minced meat ("hamburger") mixture; sometimes condensed tomato or mushroom soup. Typically topped with cheese. Most versions use a mashed potato topping, but some use cornmeal mush. Some are multi-layer.
(Potato casserole)	Russia	Usually three layers: potato-meat-potato, using pork or beef (often extended with fillers) and egg or flour added to the potatoes to make it easier to portion from a large pan. Often served in Soviet school and company cafeterias.
Pastel de carne	Uruguay	The filling is similar to that of a cottage pie, with the addition of sliced hard-boiled eggs.
Pastel de papas	Argentina, Chile	Similar to cottage pie; may also contain peppers.
Pastel tutup	Indonesia	Made with any of several meats, with vegetables such as carrots and green peas and boiled eggs, all topped with mashed potato.
Pâté chinois	Canada	Also known in Canada as shepherd's pie, consisting of a bottom layer of beef, a middle layer of creamed sweetcorn, topped with mashed potato.
Pióg an aoire	Ireland	The Irish for shepherd's pie.
Shepherdess pie	Other	Also called gardener's pie, shepherdless pie or foragers' pie: a vegetarian version made without meat or a vegan version made without meat and dairy.

See also

• British cuisine
• English cuisine
• French cuisine
• Irish cuisine
• List of English dishes
• List of French dishes
• List of Irish dishes
• List of meat and potato dishes
• List of pies, tarts and flans
• List of potato dishes
• Moussaka
• Pâté aux pommes de terre
• Pâté chinois
• Tavë kosi
• Welsh cuisine

Notes, references and sources

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External links

• Media related to at Wikimedia Commons
• Shepherds Pie (Pâté Chinois) at the Wikibooks Cookbook subproject
• Shepherd's Pie 2 at the Wikibooks Cookbook subproject
• The Victorian Way: "How to make Sanders (Shepherd's Pie)", video re-enactment by English Heritage using mutton.