When history collides with the kitchen …… missing out the shepherd from Shepherd’s Pie ..... cooking from home no. 3

 The challenge is a simple one.

Take a handful of ingredients from the kitchen and come up with a favourite meal, while at the same time exploring its history. *

There will be those who debate with ferocious tenacity the differences between a dish made with minced beef or minced lamb and which both are finished off with a mashed potato topping.

Now, as a vegetarian the distinction is pretty much an irrelevance to me, but names are important and I am never one to scorn meat eaters, which alas is not always their reaction to my lifestyle choice.

But sticking with the traditional two, my Wikipedia tells me that the first references to both appear in the late eighteenth century, with a variation in Scotland using slices of meat and in other places mutton and even pork. *  

And a roundup of modern cooks shows some of them loosely use both names for the same dish while others will happily substitute different animals from beef to lamb to pork  and fall back on leftovers from a roast as well as  buying new.

Added to which the first published vegetarian offering dates from the late 19th century.

None of which is surprising given that all of them owe their origins I suspect to that simple household requirement never to waste food, which in turn demands that leftovers are represented in different ways to ring the changes, and to make them go further add bulking ingredients like mashed potato.

So, in our house I have used up left over veg cooked in a tomato, or cheese sauce and topped with mashed potato or mixed them altogether and fried in a pan which I admit becomes a hash rather than a pie.

And one of our Ben’s favourites substituted the leftover veg with sliced red cabbage a mix of herbs and spices which I fried with tomatoes and onions and topped with the mashed potato.

More recently I have used Quorn mince which has less to do with replicating real meat and just that it is an easy thing to add.

But I do try to avoid any processed food and so usually cook down some lentils which with the veg become the filling.

As for the cooking it’s just a matter of filling the dish with the veg/Quorn/cooked lentils, seasoning and topping with mashed potato.

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2026

*When history collides with the kitchen, kitchen, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/10/when-history-collides-with-kitchen.html

**Shepherd’s Pie, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherd%27s_pie