Stargazy Pie
A Cornish fish pie with the heads of the pilchards poking through the crust to look at the sky. It sounds like a joke and it is entirely practical.
Photograph credit: baked stargazy pie by goodiesfirst · CC BY 2.0 · Flickr
Don't Make These Mistakes
Heads outside the crust. Inside, their oil turns the filling bitter.
Bone them but keep them whole. That is the dish.
Custard, not white sauce. It sets around the fish.
Cooking Stargazy Pie
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Rub the butter and lard into the flour and salt, add the cold water and bring to a dough. Wrap and refrigerate 1 hour.
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Season the boned fish inside with the salt, pepper and lemon juice.
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Fry the bacon and onion together 8 minutes, until the onion is soft, then cool.
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Roll two thirds of the pastry and line a 24 cm pie dish.
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Scatter the bacon and onion over the base with the quartered eggs and the parsley.
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Lay the fish like the spokes of a wheel, tails meeting at the centre, heads resting up on the rim of the dish.
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Whisk the custard ingredients together and pour it around the fish.
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Roll the remaining pastry into a lid, cut slits for the heads, and lay it over so each head comes through. Seal the edge.
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Glaze the pastry with the beaten egg, avoiding the heads.
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Bake at 180°C / 355°F fan / 200°C / 390°F / gas 6 for 45 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the custard is set.
Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Pan and tin size.
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Why the Method Works
The heads are outside the crust for a reason: they are full of oil, and left inside they would make the filling bitter, while sticking out they drain their oil down into the pie as it bakes. So the fish are laid tails to the centre with the heads propped on the rim, and the pastry is cut round them. Bone the fish along the backbone but leave them whole in outline — a filleted stargazy is just a fish pie in a hat. And custard rather than sauce: the egg and cream set around the fish and hold everything together.
Storage and Reheating
Refrigerated for 2 days. Reheat covered at 160°C / 320°F. Do not freeze.
Ingredient Swaps
- In a sauce, full-fat crème fraîche can usually take the place of the double cream; single cream is thinner and more likely to split if it boils, so keep it below a simmer.
Good With
- Buttered new potatoes
- Peas
- A dry Cornish cider
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Braised Red Cabbage, Duck Fat Roast Potatoes, Honey Roasted Carrots.
Still Wondering?
How long does Stargazy Pie take to make?
45 minutes of preparation and 45 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of chilling the pastry, so allow 2 hours 30 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 6.
Stargazy Pie Nutrition Facts
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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