Kerry pie

The Kerry pie is a small hand-sized lamb pie with diced meat, onion and herbs such as thyme inside a firm pastry. In older versions, the pastry was made with sheep fat, and the pies were often cooked in the lamb’s own broth, like dumplings. Outside Kerry the same pie is known as Dingle pie, named for the town on the Dingle peninsula.

Lamb pies were part of the county’s markets and festivals. They were sold at the Listowel, Killorglin and Dingle fairs; cook and teacher Darina Allen records that they were served at Killorglin’s Puck Fair in August and were taken up to the hills by the men who tended the flocks. In the 1930s special pie houses (tig na bPíoga in Irish) opened in towns to serve fairgoers.

On Pattern days, local religious festivals, women baked the pies during the week beforehand. In fabric stalls set up near the festival, they were warmed in a cauldron over turf fire and served on a shallow plate with a little broth. At the Pattern of Castlegregory, on Lady’s Day (15 August), the lamb pie remains the hallmark of the celebration, prepared in large quantities by the community.

The pies also became the subject of jokes: an anonymous 1901 poem, The Kerry Pie, teases the hard pastry that “never breaks through.” Today many recipes replace mature sheep with lamb, sheep fat with butter, and add carrot.