stargazy pie

English

Etymology

stargaze +‎ -y and pie, the upturned fish seeming to stare skywards.

Noun

stargazy pie (usually uncountable, plural stargazy pies)

1. A Cornish dish of baked pilchards, covered with a pastry crust, arranged with their tails toward the centre of the pie and their heads poking up through the crust.
   • 2023 July 15, Rachel Cooke, “No, Nigella – dinner parties are great. Deliveroo just doesn’t cut it”, in The Observer‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Another time, she dined in Hampstead, where she was fed a version of stargazy pie with a whole squid where the eel should have been. It was flavoured, for the full medieval effect, with galangal, which her hostess described as “kind of like frankincense”.

Alternative forms

• stargazey pie