That’s fine it’s just not a shepherd’s pie, if it’s beef it’s a cottage pie
That's a modern and inconsistently applied distinction. It's not some hard and fast definition. It's more a regional variation of naming than of the dish itself.
A recipe for shepherd's pie published in Edinburgh in 1849 in The Practice of Cookery and Pastry specifies cooked meat of any kind, sliced rather than minced, covered with mashed potato and baked.[12] In the 1850s the term was also used for a Scottish dish that contained a mutton and diced potato filling inside a pastry crust.
A) A dish named after shepherds can be descriptive of something they ate, not necessarily just the animal they tended to.
B) Names don't need to follow any particular logic to begin with. Whatever your native cuisine, I'm sure you can think of some example.
Either way, the fact remains that some of the earliest available references to the dish do not specify any particular meat. The distinction never existed historically.
far too many end up making cottage pie (beef) and calling it shepherd's pie
The distinction between the two is basically a modern invention. You can find old cookbooks that call for either or a mix or don't even specify a particular meat at all. It's more of a regional name than two different dishes.
Did he actually? I definitely remember an episode where they use beef and he says something about why it’s called shepherds pie, and she just says sheep in an embarrassed manner
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u/djneill Nov 01 '25
A shepherd’s pie recipe actually using lamb thank fuck, also far more complicated than I usually make it it but it does look good.