Talk:Cottage pie

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It's not just people from Quebec that call it Pate chinois, it's all French Canadians.


Is what you call mince in Britain just what we call ground beef.

Yes I think so.

Because to an American it sounds like mincemeat which is a whole other thing.

As it is in england. Mincemeat is sweet. Go figure.

Also don't you use vegetable in shephard's pie? An typical American recipe would be ground beef, corn -maize- and mashed potatoes. Rmhermen 15:16 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Corn sounds yuck! I've amended the page to take note of you comments. Thanks for the feedbackTheresa knott 15:30 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

I've never heard of veggies being added to it in the States, particularly not corn of any kind. (Aside from the cooked onions, that is, and possibly a little bit of cooked garlic for the adventurous, and maybe a little tomato paste in the gravy.) The French, who also eat enormous amounts of it as hachis parmentier, don't put veggies in it either.

Two questions: why, in the recipe, discard the water if thick gravy is used instead? In fact, why cook the meat and onions in water in the first place if the water is going to be discarded? It doesn't make sense -- both the meat and onions have already been cooked, and they are going to bake for another 45 minutes or so when assembled....

And why is this recipe here in Wikipedia rather than the recipe book? A couple of months ago one of my first articles was for Tartiflette, which had been mentioned under Reblochon. I contributed my own recipe and it was put up for deletion (and moving it to the recipe book). I argued that it should remain in Wikipedia but lost.... Maybe no one officious enough has noticed the shepherd's pie recipe? Hayford Peirce 23:27, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Recipes tend to be allowed only where it is valuable in describing the dish to someone who does not know what it is. If this can be achieved (accurately) without a recipe, recipes aren't required. Whether thats the case here or not, answers on a postcard.........Patch86 23:30, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no real defined recipe for shepherd's pie or cottage pie - everyone does it their own way, often with the same result. For example I'd fry onions, garlic and the meat, crumble in a couple of stock cubes then add a can of chopped tomatoes, herbs a handful of frozen peas and some chopped carrot. Never heard of anyone using redcurrant jelly!

In Australia, despite our massive sheep population, Shepherd's pie is almost exclusively made with minced beef and baked with a top layer of grated cheddar cheese. The beef/onion mixture is often cooked with a handful of frozen peas, or with grated carrot and zucchini that disappears into the mixture, which is usually thickened with a commercial gravy mix (e.g."Gravox", cf. British "Bisto"). Many households have shepherd's pie weekly and most frozen food manufacturers have a "TV dinner" variant. --MichaelGG 02:42, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Image

Wow, that picture is messy. Are there any free alternatives to that? ZsinjTalk 18:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I might be making a pie next week. I'll take a picture of it for you and pop it into Wikipedia. I'll try not to be too messy. 8^).EasyTiger10 22:22, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Botato

Botatoe? Potato? Potatoe? --Kaiolav72 02:59, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

A google search didn't show much for Botatoe, so I'm going to assume that was a typo. Please assume good faith if my change is wrong. - TheMightyQuill 09:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Americans

Could you clarify? Do you actually call the pie made of beef with potato on top "Shepherd's pie"? Skittle 16:56, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes. -TheMightyQuill 16:15, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I may go fiddle with some of the wording in the article then! Skittle 17:27, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Just wondering why this page is a "stub"? It had more information then most similar pages in Wikipedia.

These wiki-ratings ("stub", "start class" etc) are suitable for being completely ignored. They're assigned by people who enjoy the spurious sense of authority it lends them but who can't be arsed to do any research/rewrites themselves. El Ingles 21:35, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Or you could just remove the stub tag. And why would this be a pie-related stub, anyway? I mean, by all means shepherd's pie isn't actually a pie, is it? Calgary 19:24, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
What? Yes it is. There is a whole class of pies with a mashed-potato topping rather than pastry (fish pie, cottage pie, shepherd's pie). There's more pies in heaven and Earth... Skittle 22:34, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tomato Puree

Sounds like nonsense to me! At the top of the article it states that this is a traditional dish. How long have tomatoes been available in the UK? With tomatoes it sounds like a "bolognese" pie;-) TinyMark 18:54, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merge

As far as I can see, all the information on the Shepherdess Pie page is already here. Perhaps just delete the text from "Shepherdess Pie" and do a redirect to this article! TinyMark 19:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I concur. --Zeamays 18:38, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Ditto. Thedarxide (talk) 12:08, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wierd Link

If you want to see something strange click on Français, on the left of this article, and then click on English in the French article. TinyMark 19:03, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Cute. Hard to know what to do about that, if anything. The two recipes are similar but not quite the same. --El Ingles 19:12, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
There are many variations on hachis parmentier and many variations on cottage or shepherd's pie. They are essentially the same and it's only the fact that the two hachis parmentier articles (English and French) are based on just one of many recipes that makes them seem in any way different to cottage pie and shepherd's pie. In fact, one recipe for hachis parmentier (not mentioned) is listed by Escoffier: the basic ingredients (chopped meat and mashed potato) are the same but the result isn't school dinner the way I knew it. Letsgetthingsright (talk) 21:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cottage or shepherd?

If you guys go have a look at the wikibooks (link at the main page), you may notice that "Cottage pie" actually refers to the same recipe with ground beef instead. I think both terms deserve to be mentioned in the article anyway considering that.--Blackhawk charlie2003 (talk) 14:56, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

That information was already under the variations section., And rightly so. Almost everybody in the UK calls it Shepherd's Pie when it is made with minced beef in spite of the majority of them knowing full well that the correct name is Cottage Pie, but the information is still better in the variation section. TINYMARK 00:17, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm puzzled as to why this article is called "Shepherd's Pie" with "Cottage Pie" being redirected to it. Cottage pie does not imply any specific meat and practically every cookery writer I can find uses cottage pie as the generic term, having shepherd's pie as the popular way of describing cottage pie when it's made with lamb or mutton. It would be more useful and logical to call the article "Cottage pie" and have "Shepherd's pie" redirected. Letsgetthingsright (talk) 01:06, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Totally agree with you, Letsgetthingsright. The "shepherd" in "shepherd's pie" is there precisely to indicate that it's a cottage pie made with lamb or mutton, and even though it's by no means unknown for people to call the minced-beef-and-mashed-potato dish a "shepherd's pie", since this article deals with minced-meat-and-mashed-potato dishes as a whole, the generic term "cottage pie" should be used as it's title. Can anyone please "let it be so"? (I generally get into a tangle when trying to "swap titles and re-directs.) -- Picapica (talk) 15:43, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I'll give it a try. Letsgetthingsright (talk) 19:50, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm. I see what you mean about getting into a tangle. Letsgetthingsright (talk) 20:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
By the way, I've found no evidence to convince me that the term "shepherd's pie" was coined to indicate that the meat was mutton, rather than both terms coming into generic use to indicate "a pie made in the shepherds' style" or "a pie made in the cottagers' style", and that the difference was not the content but the nature of the regional agricultural economy. If I'm right, then the key to the nature of the pie is that potato was a cheap crop grown for estate workers as distinct from their landlords, and shepherd's pie was later associated with lamb in the process of folk etymology. If you have other evidence then please say so: I'll be very interested. Letsgetthingsright (talk) 20:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Un-fucking-believable. Wikipedia really has gone to the dogs now. Richard W.M. Jones (talk) 23:14, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
Hello, what upset you then? Letsgetthingsright (talk) 11:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Hi Letsgetthingsright, you really should check WP:MOVE. The talk page is now attached to the other article. GameKeeper (talk) 23:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
I've told him already and someone is looking into repairing the damage—I hope! TINYMARK 00:28, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I haOK I've done what I could to revert the move, not because I disagree with it but because its been mangled by the technology. We still need an admin to get the cottage pie history back. I'll ask for help.
User:Slakr helped and sorted it out GameKeeper (talk) 11:02, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Future moves to be by request

I had responded to a request and pointed a handful of broken redirects to Shepherd's pie after some poor edits. It looked fine to me - Cottage pie and Shepherd's pie being largely synonymous. The article has now been changed to Cottage pie. So I have again updated the redirects. That was thirteen redirects which had to be updated to point to Cottage pie. Any change now should go through Wikipedia:Requested moves linking to this discussion so that an Admin is aware that there has been prior discussion on this matter, and that there are multiple redirects involved. As the person who approached me said, it really doesn't matter which way round the title is as both forms need to be discussed within the article. Frankly this sort of petty renaming is time-consuming, damaging, disruptive and pointless. When there are two equal terms for a topic, and one has been in place for a long time with an article structured around the existing term, including multiple redirects then the common sense approach is to leave things alone. It's all a learning process, and we've all been there and done similar things! Take from this experience that it's always worth considering the potential disruption involved in a move - especially when there is no real net gain. SilkTork *What's YOUR point? 08:31, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Admiral's Pie?

I can find no historical or traditional reference to admiral's pie. It seems to be a marketing idea of Young's Seafood Limited. If, as the main article states, it is fisherman's pie made with cream then it is simply fisherman's pie. I suspect that the term "admiral's pie" is used commercially to signal a better-than-average (more expensive) oven-ready meal. Letsgetthingsright (talk) 00:14, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What is "china pie"?

Despite glib advice from Thedarxide, I can find no substantiation for the inclusion of "china pie". I can only guess that it's a short form of Chinese pie, which is an alternative North American term for shepherd's pie, duly discussed in the article.

Certainly, the reference to china pie was introduced by someone with a USA IP address (72.73.96.99).

Let's bear in mind that this is an article about an essentially English traditional dish and if a minority in the USA have other names for it, let them say so in a fitting context, with citations.

81.153.198.83 (talk) 21:36, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Glib advice? All you had to do was put china pie into the search box. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_pie. It's even listed in the variations section of the article. Thedarxide (talk) 08:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Yes, glib. A Google search for "china pie" results in thousands of opportunities to buy pie dishes made from china clay. Since as you now point out, "china pie" is indeed a short form of Chinese pie, it is already included in the article in a suitable context and does not need to be repeated among the accepted UK English names. 81.153.198.83 (talk) 11:51, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] mergefrom Cumberland pie

Just another slight variation. - TheMightyQuill (talk) 00:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)