Shepherd's pie 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 top. The term "cottage pie" was in use by 1791,
Humble pie Humble pie To eat humble pie, in common usage, is to face humiliation and subsequently apologize for a serious mistake. Humble pie, or umble pie, is also a term for a variety of pastries based on medieval meat pies. The expression derives from umble pie, a pie filled with the chopped or minced parts of a beast's 'pluck' – the heart, liver, lungs or 'lights' and kidneys, especially of deer but often other meats. Umble evolved from numble (after the French nomble), meaning 'deer's innards'. It has occasionally been suggested that 'umbles' were considered inferior food and that in medieval