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Shepherd's Pie
Chop 1 pound cooked meat, mix in 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs, 1 chopped onion, 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, 1 cup gravy, salt and pepper to taste, 2 tablespoons Crisco, half teaspoon powdered herbs, and 1 tablespoon tomato catsup. Turn into fireproof dish and cover with thick layer seasoned mashed potatoes. Brush over with beaten egg and dot with pieces of Crisco. Bake 20 minutes.
A leftovers dish written for a cook who already had roast meat and gravy in the larder. The instructions assume more knowledge than they state, chiefly about the oven.
- No temperature givenThe recipe says only "Bake 20 minutes." Twenty minutes is only enough to brown the top and heat the filling through in a fairly hot oven, around 400F, with both meat and gravy going in warm.
- CriscoThe book was written to promote Crisco, then newly introduced hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Modern Crisco has been reformulated and contains far less trans fat than the original; butter works at least as well in both the filling and the dotting on top.
- Cooked meatTraditionally leftover roast lamb or mutton; the recipe says chop, not grind. A pound of cooked boneless meat is roughly the yield of a 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb raw joint, more if it is bone-in. If you start from raw ground meat instead, brown it fully and reduce the gravy before assembling, or the filling will be loose.
- GravyOne cup for a pound of meat gives a filling that is moist but not soupy. It must be thickened gravy, not stock; thin liquid will boil up through the potato crust.
- Powdered herbsProbably shorthand for a dried mixed-herb blend of the sort sold at the time; thyme, marjoram, sage and savory are the usual candidates. Half a teaspoon of any dried poultry-seasoning style mix will stand in.
- Tomato catsupHomemade and small-producer catsups of the period were often thinner and sharper than the modern bottle, though commercial brands were already close. If you want the sharper effect, a tablespoon of tomato paste with a few drops of vinegar will give it.
- Fireproof dishAn ovenproof earthenware or enamelled dish, roughly a 1 1/2-quart size here. The filling should come no more than two-thirds up so the potato has a rim to seal against.
- YieldServes four generously, three if it is the only dish on the table.
Shepherd's pie belongs to the nineteenth-century economy of the cold joint: a Sunday roast reappearing on Monday or Tuesday under a potato crust, a use for meat that would otherwise be eaten cold and grudgingly. The name is generally traced to the mid-1800s, when cheap potatoes and mincing machines made the dish practical in ordinary households; the distinction now drawn between shepherd's pie (lamb) and cottage pie (beef) was not strictly observed in period cookbooks, and this one does not specify the meat at all. Its appearance in A Calendar of Dinners is characteristic of the book's purpose: the volume was produced to demonstrate Crisco in every corner of the daily menu, so the shortening turns up here twice, once bound into the meat and again dotted over the potatoes where a British cook would have used butter or dripping.