stargazy pie

noun

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.

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Meanings

nounstargazy pie (usually uncountable, plural stargazy pies)

plural stargazy pies · alternative stargazey pie · alternative starry-gazy pie

  1. uncountableusuallyA 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.

    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”.

    2023 July 15, Rachel Cooke, “No, Nigella – dinner parties are great. Deliveroo just doesn’t cut it”, in The Observer, →ISSN

Origin

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

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

stargazy pie. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/stargazy%20pie

MLA

“stargazy pie.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/stargazy%20pie. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “stargazy pie,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/stargazy%20pie.

Source: stargazy pie on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.