Shepherds Pie: what is the authentic dish and how is it prepared?
When my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are in town, my husband and I like to go out to dinner with them. We decided to go to a local golf club for a night of comfort food. My sister-in-law ordered Shepherds Pie, a historic dish made with lamb, vegetables, and mashed potatoes.
But this main course did not resemble the historical recipe; had been Americanized. “What does this taste like?” I asked.
“It’s meatloaf with mashed potatoes on top,” my sister-in-law replied. “This is good, but it’s not Shepherds Pie.” Her comment made me curious about the history of the food. I knew that Shepherds Pie is not a pie at all, but rather a meat casserole or hot dish, as we say in my home state of Minnesota.
According to the Cooks.Com website, Shepherds Pie is a British dish made from lamb. Its cousin, Cottage Pie, is made with beef. Contrary to what some believe, none contain cheese. “If you see cheese near a recipe for either,” the website says, “embrace the US obsession with adding cheese to anything that moves…”
Mark R. Vogel offers a brief history of the dish in his Food Reference website article, “The Good Shepherd.” Vogel says the recipe originated in the “heart of the Scottish countryside,” which is lamb country, and is a traditional way of using up leftovers. He thinks the recipe dates back to the 1870s. Although vegetables are added today, the original dish was meat, gravy and potatoes.
Vogel uses ground lamb for his recipe and adds onions, carrots, and celery. He tells how to make homemade gravy with beef broth and mashed potatoes with heavy cream. Now that’s comfort food!
Paul Merrett’s recipe for the classic dish is posted on the BBC website. His recipe calls for chopped garlic, fresh rosemary, parsnips, peas, and tomatoes, and is more of a modern empanada. Some websites say the recipe is British and others say it’s Scottish. In my search for information on the historic dish, I found a recipe for Ratatouille Shepherds Pie, which is about as far from a meat pie as you can get.
I make Shepherds Pie the old-fashioned way. My interpretation is based on a recipe from “The Fannie Farmer Cookbook: A Legacy of Fine Cooking for a New Generation of Cooks.” Like so many leftover-based dishes, there are no precise measurements. For starters, I have about three cups of cubed lamb. If I’m short on sauce, I sauté some meat in a cast iron skillet, remove it, and make more sauce from the juices and chunks of meat in the pan.
I put the sauce, meat, and a box of thawed carrots and peas in a saucepan and top the mixture with mashed potatoes. You can make mashed potatoes from scratch or use dehydrated mashed potatoes. Bake the casserole in a 375 degree oven for 35-40 minutes. Shepherds Pie, comfort food at its finest, has stood the test of time and new versions are sure to appear.
Copyright 2010 by Harriet Hodgson.