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Why is there a pie called shepherds pie?
Shepherd's pie describes a pie made with minced lamb or mutton topped with mashed potato and baked. The term originated in the late nineteenth century. It is a version of cott…age pie, which is made from minced beef topped with potato; that term goes back to the eighteenth century. The dates these names were introduced to English by no means indicates this was when the dish was first cooked; these types of pie would've been cooked long before that, but these were the first recorded instances of the names found to date. The explanation for the different terms is that shepherd's pie is so named because it contains lamb and therefore would have been cooked by shepherds. This is probably not true. The term cottage pie is thought to have arisen because the combination of minced (ground) leftover meat and potatoes, which were cheap, might have been attractive to rural peasants who lived in cottages, as poor people did back then. Today, both terms are used for any dish made with a layer of meat topped with mashed potato and baked. (MORE)
