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.
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.
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.
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.
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 â that the latter can be made with mutton rather than beef:
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.
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.
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: