The way Brits describe their fish pie is a lot like the way Texans talk about brisket or New Yorkers explain a properly chewy bagel—which is to say, with great conviction and affection. The Guardian columnist Felicity Cloake has compared the beloved casserole to a cozy pair of slippers or a Sunday-afternoon film with a mug of tea, and Manchester-based journalist Tony Naylor dubbed it “elbows-on-the-table, fork-in-one-hand, glass-in-the-other eating.” “Fish pie,” he wrote in his own Guardian account, “should be a dish of seamless comfort-troffing.”
Unequivocally snug, substantive fare that likely evolved as a Lenten dish made with seafood scraps (see “From Meatless Fridays to Fish Pie”), the dish is the surf equivalent of shepherd’s or cottage pie. It’s typically a mixture of fresh and smoked finfish such as cod, haddock, and salmon and shellfish such as shrimp, which is all napped with a creamy, roux-based sauce flavored with stock,
