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,
Pork pie were sweetened, often with fruit, and were meant to be eaten cold: the crust was discarded rather than being eaten. A particularly elaborate and spectacular recipe described in medieval recipe collection "The Forme of Cury" was a meat pie featuring a crust formed into battlements and filled with sweet custards, the entire pie then being served flambeed: a distant descendant of this dish, with hollow pastry turrets around a central pork pie, was still current in the 18th century under the name "battalia pie". Hannah Glasse's influential 1747 recipe collection included a recipe for a "Cheshire pork pie", having a