Shepherd's pie, cottage pie, or in French cuisine hachis Parmentier, 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 usual meats are beef or lamb. 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
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,[1] and the distinction is backed by some reference works.[n 1][n 2] Other authorities[n 3] and cooks and food writers including Prue Leith, Caroline Waldegrave and John Ayto regard the two names as completely interchangeable.[n 4]
In Australia,[n 5] Canada,[n 6] and the US,[n 7] "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.[n 8]
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.[13] 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.[14][n 9] Sanders or Saunders could also have a filling of sliced meat.[16][n 10] 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."[18]
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.[3] 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.[19] The meat may be raw or previously cooked;[2] 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".[20] Modern recipes for cottage pie typically use fresh beef.[2]
Shepherd's pie
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.[21] In the 1850s the term was also used for a Scottish dish that contained a mutton and diced potato filling inside a pastry crust.[22] Neither shepherd's pie nor cottage pie was mentioned in the original edition of Mrs Beeton's Household Management in 1861.[23]
More recently "shepherd's pie" has generally been used for a potato-topped dish of minced lamb.[2] 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.[24]
Hachis Parmentier
The dish hachis Parmentier is named after Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who popularised the potato in French cuisine in the late 18th century.[2] It is documented from the late 19th century.[n 11] 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 hachis, meaning food "finely chopped".)[26][n 12]
In some recipes a layer of sauté potatoes is put in the cooking dish before the meat filling and mashed potato topping are added.[28] A more elaborate version by Auguste Escoffier, named hachis de boeuf à Parmentier, 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.[29]
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 and the US.
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.
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.
↑Oxford Companion to Food: "In keeping with the name [of shepherd's pie] the meat should be mutton or lamb; and it is usually cooked meat left over from a roast".[2]
↑Oxford English Dictionary: "cottage pie: A dish of minced beef or (occasionally) other meat which has been topped with mashed potato and then baked or browned"; "shepherd's pie: a pie consisting of chopped meat and potatoes, covered with a crust of mashed potatoes browned".[3]
↑Brewer's Dictionary: "Cottage pie: Another name for shepherd's pie, made with minced meat topped with mashed potato. A distinction used to be drawn between the beef content of cottage pie and the lamb or mutton content of shepherd's pie, but there is no evidence that that was originally the case, and it is largely ignored nowadays".[4] Shepherd's pie, "A pie made with minced meat topped with mashed potato. The term was at one time applied strictly to such a pie made with lamb or mutton, but it is now used synonymously with cottage pie".[5]
↑Leith and Waldegrave: "The confusion over Cottage Pie and Shepherd's Pie is complete. Cottage pie used to denote the use of leftover cooked meat, either beef or mutton. "Shepherd's", naturally enough, meant that mutton was the meat used, usually pre-cooked. But today either name seems to mean either beef or lamb, made with leftover or fresh meat, the only certainty being the mashed potato top".[6] Ayto: "In present-day English, cottage pie is an increasingly popular synonym for shepherd's pie, a dish of minced meat with a topping of mashed potato".[7]
↑Australian Oxford Dictionary: "cottage pie = shepherd's pie"; "shepherd's pie: a dish of minced meat under a layer of mashed potato".[8]
↑Oxford Canadian Dictionary: "shepherd's pie: a dish of ground meat under a layer of mashed potato"; there is no entry for "cottage pie".[9]
↑Merriam-Webster Dictionary (US): "shepherd's pie: a meat pie with a mashed potato crust".[10] The dictionary has no entry for cottage pie.
↑The Australian chain Coles Supermarkets offers a shepherd's pie made with minced beef.[11] The photograph of the "shepherd's pies" immediately below the infobox of this article was taken in Vancouver and the meat is stated to be beef. Walmart (US) offers three different "shepherd's pies" made with beef; Costco (US) likewise sells shepherd's pies made with beef.[12]
↑In 1845 Eliza Acton published her recipe for "Saunders", similar to Rundell's, but with a layer of mashed potato underneath the minced meat as well as one on top. Like Rundell, she uses pre-cooked meat but adds, "A very superior kind of saunders is made by substituting fresh meat for roasted; but this requires to be baked an hour or something more".[15]
↑The name "Saunders" is still used in at least one cookery book for a similar dish made with corned beef.[17]
↑It is listed on a bistro menu in Le Petit Moniteur universel, 29 June 1892: "Escargots. Fraise de veau. Ravigotte. Navarin pommes. Salé aux choux. Hachis Parmentier. Œufs, saucisses. Poulet rôti chaud".[25]
↑In his Grand dictionnaire de cuisine (1873) Alexandre Dumas wrote, "When you have veal, beef, chicken, game or scraps of meat left over from dinner the night before, all you have to do is chop these left-overs neatly, and there are tools for that, until the whole forms a complete mixture."[27]
↑In Mère Biasin's version, rather than a single layer of ragout and a single layer of potato, there would be several alternating layers of each, with a potato one on the top.[31]
↑"For me, the best shepherd's pie is made with leftover roast lamb, either shoulder or leg. In fact, I remember my sister and myself holding back on a Sunday lunch in case there wasn't enough left to make the pie."[51]
↑Torode comments, "The great cottage pie – whoever worked this one out was a genius".[56]
↑Westermann adds fennel to the mashed potato topping.[57]
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