London Pie and Mash (Pie and mash)
Pie and mash Say it: PYE and MASH
Pie and mash is the old working-class food of East and South London, sold in specialist shops with tiled walls and marble tables since the 19th century. Each diner gets a small minced-beef pie with a suet crust, a heap of buttery mashed potato, and a ladle of 'liquor' — a pale green parsley sauce. The pie is savoury and peppery, the mash soft and rich, and the liquor herby and light. It is cheap, filling, unfussy comfort food, and still eaten today as a London tradition.
London Pie and Mash (Pie and mash)
Pie and mash
Pronounced PYE and MASH
- Serves
- 4
- Prep
- 35 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Total
- 1 hr 20 min
- Level
- Medium
Also nut-free and egg-free.
Allergens: contains gluten, milk. Check labels on packaged ingredients.
Ingredients
Amounts are scaled. Cooking times and pan sizes stay the same.
For the suet pastry
For the beef filling
For the parsley liquor
For the mash
Method
Make the pastry. stir the flour and salt together, rub in the suet (or butter) until it looks like rough breadcrumbs, then add the water a little at a time until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough. Wrap and chill for 20 minutes.
Heat the oil in a wide pan and cook the onion for 5 minutes until soft and translucent. Add the minced beef and fry over high heat, breaking it up, until no pink remains and the edges begin to brown.
Sprinkle in the flour, stir for a minute, then pour in the hot stock and Worcestershire sauce. Simmer for 12-15 minutes until thick and glossy, season with the salt and pepper, and spread on a plate to cool completely.
Heat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Cut the pastry into four pieces, then cut a quarter off each piece for the lids. Roll the larger pieces and line four greased 4½-inch (11 cm) pie tins, pressing the pastry gently into the corners.
Fill each case with the cooled beef, brush the rims with water, and lay on the rolled lids. Press the edges to seal, trim, crimp with a fork, and cut a small steam hole in the top of each pie.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the pastry is deep golden brown and the edges crisp and lifting slightly from the tins. Leave in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out.
Meanwhile boil the potatoes in salted water for 18-20 minutes, until a knife slides in with no resistance. Drain well, mash until smooth, then beat in the butter, milk and salt until light and fluffy.
For the liquor, melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute without colouring. Whisk in the stock gradually until smooth, then simmer for 5-6 minutes until lightly thickened, like a thin gravy.
Stir the parsley and milk into the sauce, season with salt and white pepper, and simmer 1 minute more — it should be pale green and pourable, not thick. Serve each pie on a mound of mash with a generous ladle of liquor poured over.
Regional variant: Pie, mash and liquor with stewed eels
In the classic East End version, eels are simmered in salted water with a little vinegar until tender, and that broth replaces half the beef stock in the liquor, giving it a deeper, faintly marine flavour. The eels are served alongside the pie, hot with the liquor or cold and set as jellied eels, and the pies are often made without the extra Worcestershire sauce so the eel broth comes through.
Cook's notes
- Cool the beef filling completely before filling the pastry, or the suet crust will go soggy and slide down the sides.
- If suet is hard to find, use cold butter or lard rubbed into the flour — the crust will be shorter and crisper, but still good.
- Keep the liquor thin enough to pour; it thickens as it stands, so loosen it with a splash more stock if needed.
Serve with
A mug of strong tea, or a splash of malt vinegar on the mash and white pepper on the liquor.
Make ahead and storage
The beef filling can be cooked and chilled up to 2 days ahead; baked pies reheat at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes, and the liquor keeps 2 days in the fridge, loosened with stock when reheated.
