Shepherd's pie a mashed potato crust on top. Other potato-topped pies include: Shepherd's pie Shepherd's pie or cottage pie is a meat pie with a crust or topping of mashed potato. The recipe has many variations, but the defining ingredients are minced red meat (commonly, "cottage pie" refers to beef and "shepherd's pie" to lamb), cooked in a gravy or sauce with onions and sometimes other vegetables, such as peas, celery or carrots, and topped with a layer of mashed potato before it is baked. The pie is sometimes also topped with grated cheese to create a layer of melted cheese on
Pie and mash to higher social classes. The working class were poor and favoured foodstuffs that were cheap, in plentiful supply and easy to prepare. The savoury pie had long been a traditional food, and its small handsized form also made it a transportable meal, protected from dirt by its cold pastry crust, and filled with cheap minced meat, usually mutton. Adding cheap mashed potatoes, together with a sauce made with fish stock and parsley, made it a plate-based sit-down meal. Jellied eels are often associated with pie and mash, as European eels cooked in gelatine also became a common worker's meal since