A question about shepherd's pie

On Sunday we had shepherd's pie for dinner because I had leftover lamb from Friday. Whenever we have a roast and have leftovers we invariably have shepherd's pie because we love it.

Even though it's never the same. The amount of leftovers varies. Sometimes it has to be bolstered with some bacon or ham, or some extra vegetables. The meat can also be different. It might be beef or it might be lamb, as it was this time. It might even be pork. Some purists of course would say it's cottage pie if it's beef and shepherd's pie if it's lamb but truth to tell the terms have been used indiscriminately for at least two centuries. And pork? I'm not sure you're supposed to use pork at all. Although why not?

But that's not my question. My question is that I think of this as a quintessentially British dish, and yet it's such an obvious (at first sight anyway) leftovers solution, I wondered why I don't know of versions from elsewhere. I say British because England, north or south, Ireland and Scotland have all laid claim to it at some point in time.

I have written about shepherd's pie before at least once - Apparently my shepherd's pie is all wrong - so I won't repeat myself on defending my way, and reporting on all the other ways you can make it. No - I shall report on my very brief 'research' on whether it exists outside that tiny island nation near the top of the world.

Obviously nobody in Europe made this before at least the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. When they started cooking with potatoes that is, because before then there were no potatoes. So I wonder what they did with their leftover roast meat before? Did they make a carrot mash? A topic for another time perhaps when I have more time. However, once the potatoes had arrived and were being used - as they are - throughout Europe, why didn't they also make shepherd's pie?

Well actually the French did at least. Yet another tiny proof that in spite of appearances the French and the British have a lot in common.

Their version is called Hachis Parmentier after the pharmacist Antoine Augustine Parmentier who spent his life promoting the potato to the French who were suspicious of it. He began growing them and in a time of famine they became very popular amongst the poor. And today many French potato centred dishes have Parmentier attached to them.

As you can see the basic thing is pretty much the same as Shepherd's pie and the couple of recipes I saw seemed to be pretty much the same, although perhaps with some garlic. Although of course, as in Britain, people have fiddled with it, fried the meat again, added more vegetables to the mix - not just leftover ones from the roast, and added fancy sauces.

Now Parmentier lived from 1737 to 1813, which is rather earlier than recipes for Shepherd's pie began to appear in Britain - mid 19th century, so maybe it's really a French dish.

I couldn't however, find any other native versions in Europe - just copies of the French and British one. Why, why, why? Surely they have leftover roast meat. Roast meat is probably the very first cooked meal of mankind, and the pieces of meat come in distinct sizes which are often too big for one meal. So what did they do with the leftovers? And potatoes are consumed in quantity all over Europe. It's a mystery.

And what about the people who first grew potatoes - the South Americans? Well actually it seems they do indeed have a similar dish called Pastel de papas. Did I say similar? It looks identical really. This is a Chilean version but there do seem to be versions of the same thing with the same name from all over South and Central America. I did see that the meat might well be flavoured with spices and that occasionally the topping is corn rather than potato, but the same thing fundamentally.

So there you go. That's all I could find. Such a simple and thrifty dish, which surely must have first been made by some peasant in South America, possibly brought back to Europe by a coloniser or two, but more likely, invented again by some British or French peasant in their little cottage, some time in the 16th or 17th century. Their next door neighbour learnt about it and so it was passed around until it became a staple Monday dinner after the Sunday roast in cold and cheerless Britain - or France.

YEARS GONE BY

August 26

2024 - Making kefir palatable

2023 - Herbes de Provence

2022 - Random thoughts on an ordinary day

2021 - Preserved lemons - a first recipe

2020 - Missing

2019 - Disappointing Tin Shed

2018 - Nothing

2017 - From the hors d'œuvre trolley to mezze, tapas and antipasti

2016 - The use-by date