This Food in History #24 Shepherd's Pie

Sep 28

Sep 28 This Food in History #24 Shepherd's Pie

Hello and welcome to today’s episode of This Food in History! We’ll be looking at the first food whose origins were exactly where I thought it might be. Shepherd’s Pie!

To make sure we’re all on the same page, shepherd’s pie is a hearty dish that layers lamb, carrots and peas vegetable medley with mashed potatoes. It’s all baked together to a nice little potato crust. If you use ground beef or so without the lamb, it’s actually called cottage pie.

Now that we’ve established that, where did it come from?

Well, we can sort the country of origin, but the exact details aren’t as definite. In fact, when you look this up, basically every article said the same thing; Shepherd’s pie was the result of various parts of history coming together to cause the creation out of need.

Let’s join them in starting in the 12th century. As told by the Irish Times, May 1st 1169 is the beginning of the Norman Invasion when a deposed King of Leinster Dermot MacMurrough, returns to Irish soil with the backing of England’s King Henry II, and Pope Adrian IV. A longtime supporter of King Henry II, MacMurrough was seeking vengeance after his father’s murder. He used mercenaries to land at Bannow Bay and set off a chain of events that put the Irish under British control and kick off the 800 years (and still counting) of oppression for the Irish people.

Let’s skip about a bit in time and as Ireland becomes a part of the United Kingdom, Protestantism becomes the official religion, even though Ireland was majority Catholic. British and Irish converts to Protestantism become the ruling landowners and are protected by the government. So the Irish catholics are forced into being peasants, and work the land. They mostly are impoverished and live in cottages.

Skip to 1589 and the potato has been introduced to Ireland. Originally from South America, the potato is a new vegetable on the block. How it made its way to Ireland is actually debated still today. Sir Walter Raleigh is often given credit, though Sir Robert Southwell, President of the Royal Society in 1693, claimed in a meeting his grandfather Anthony Southwell had done it. The Irish Potato Federation and others believe that Spanish likely had a hand in it instead. The Spanish conquistadors introduced the potato to Europe after conquering the Inca, and while there’s no written record for Irish introduction an early name was An Spáinneach Geal (ahn SPOYN-nyukh gyahl) which means “the white, or kind hearted Spaniard.”

So now we have impoverished Irish Catholics, and potatoes in Ireland. The next piece of the puzzle is the meat. Shepherd’s pie uses lamb. Beef had become an expensive commodity as the British loved beef and production increased in Ireland. While it wasn’t eaten as much anyway by the Irish, they couldn’t afford it if they wanted to. What they could obtain was mutton and lamb.

We have all the basic pieces now. It takes until the 18th century though to put together the dish. The people needed a means to reduce food waste and a “pie” was a means to do that. Layering the meat and vegetables left over after a roast, and using potato as a crust which was more affordable than flour based ones, we’ll have a shepherd’s pie.

I do want to mention that the English also stake claim for inventing shepherd's pie during these same few centuries. Though it can be said that their version was more likely to contain beef which would make it a cottage pie. In Northern England we see evidence of the dish as well. Scotland has a variation growing too.

We have the first recording of cottage-pye in 1791 by Englishman Parson Woodforde. It was noted in his dairy that he had cottage-pye and rost beef. While he isn’t credited with coining the term, he was the first found to have written about it.

In 1806, English woman, Maria Rundell published a recipe for sanders which, while also having an option for sliced meat, had the same ingredients and topped with onion and gravy. It was published in A New System of Domestic Cookery: Formed Upon Principles of Economy; and Adapted to the Use of Private Families. She was about 60 when this was published, so historians are led to believe that her sanders dish was likely older than Woodfoorde’s meal and introduction to the dish.

Edinburgh had a publication in 1849, the Practice of Cookery and Pastry that included a recipe for shepherd’s pie, though it used sliced, not minced meat. This is the first mention of the dish as a shepherd’s pie, instead of cottage or sanders. They also used the term for a similar dish inside a pastry crust that used diced potato instead of mashed, however.

A different English cookbook from 1877, Kettner’s Book of the Table, calls shepherd’s pie a Scottish variation of an Irish stew. Northwest England also has the Cumberland Pie which uses larger chunks of beef, sometimes lamb, and sometimes pork sausage.

While who did it exactly first might not be available to us, it does seem that topping meats and veggies with potatoes is an easy dish for those that are impoverished and in need to invent over and over. You can find a version in Indonesia that has pastel tutup which also follows the structure. It came from Dutch colonists to Indonesian homes. Canada has Pâté chinois that is also known as shepherd’s pie.

South America, the home of the potato, also has variations, called pastel de papas (potato cake) which match the structure too. Uruguay’s has a hard boiled egg inclusion in pastel de carne. Brazil leaves out the potato for escondidinho and replaces it with cassava root, another tuber.

In the end, shepherd’s pie and cottage pie appeared in history at similar times in the 18th century. Ireland’s version used the cheaper lamb and mutton while the British lower class used beef. Named for the impoverished living in cottages, that name came about first before a new name was used to differentiate the dishes. We can thank the Scottish for giving the new term, even if it was for a slightly different dish. Now we can find it on menus all over the world, and the dish is a staple for anyone looking for British and Irish cooking. You can enjoy as many variations and remixes of the dish as there are restaurants that serve it. A simple, but hearty dish that helped feed those in need for many many years. This has been This Food in History, thank you for watching, please like and subscribe for more!