Name: Shepherd’s pie
Yield: Serves 6
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: lard or vegetable oil, for frying; 150 ml port or whisky (or use milk if preferred); 1 kg cooked lamb; 3 large strong onions, chopped; 25 g butter; salt and freshly ground black pepper; 25 g plain flour; 75 g butter; a little milk; 300 ml meat stock; Worcestershire sauce; 1 kg potatoes, peeled

Preparation info

Serves
6

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Clarissa's Comfort Food

By Clarissa Dickson Wright

Published 2008

About

There is a great deal of rubbish talked about this excellent dish. It is not a rustic invention, but part of the post-industrial nostalgia for the countryside, which was already raising its head in Victorian times, a sentimentality for a non-existent world as later manifested by green wellies and four-wheel drives among urban dwellers and an aversion to field sports.

Shepherd’s pie came into the English cuisine after the Industrial Revolution, when metal grinders for mincing became