Talk:Pâté chinois

Sheperd's Pie
Pâté Chinois is similar to, but not Shepherd's Pie. The recipe is not exclusive to the province of Québec. Pâté Chinois is a traditional French-Canadian dish served by generations of French-Canadian families througout Canada, including the provinces of New Brunswick, Ontario and Manitoba. The recipe dates back to the Canadian trans-continental railroad construction days. The ingredients essentially include layers of ground beef and onions, creamed corn and mashed potatoes. It is indeed commonly served with ketchup or ketchup vert (green tomato chow chow).

Regarding the comment to "Pâté Chinois is similar to, but not Shepherd's Pie", in Montreal, it's always translated from Paté Chinois to Shepherd's Pie, even on restaurant menus.

- Pâté Chinois is just the french name for Shepherd's pie. It is essentially created the same elsewhere in Canada and probably even in the US too (ground beef, cream corn, (peas,) mashed potatoes, paprika). The author(s) of this article probably though everyone outside Quebec had the British variant (cheese on top) which is not the case. This article is redundant and should be merged with Shepherd's pie 24.81.199.249 01:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That is false, as the French translation of Sheperd's Pie is "Hachis Parmentier", which does not use corn in the preparation. Medoli900 (talk) 06:41, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Creamed corn
I'm from french Canada and have many maritimes friends -- we've eaten a lot of Pate Chinois. We have never heard of using creamed corn in this recipe and when I asked around, the consensus among my easter friends was that it would be an unpleasant or even disgusting addition. Quebecer's don't really use much creamed corn and it's a food that many Canadian's dislike, in my experience. It's more associated with american recipes. (I looked up a couple dozen recipes for this and none of these had creamed corn either). I believe this entry is based on a family recipe or an american version, and not a regional standard. I agree that it's made more or less the same in most of Canada.

Also, the receipe is not limited to canned corn as frozen or fresh corn is very commonly used and sometimes corn is replaced with peas and carrots or a corn, peas and carrot mix. In my experience, Quebec natives always call it shepherd's pie in English though the traditional English shepherd's pie is made with lamb and cottage pie is made with beef. The variant with potatoes in the middle is unknown to me, though it is very common to have some gravy in the meat layer.

The entry here seems to be based on an individual family recipe and it's just too specific in some areas (ie, the specifiction of canned corn as opposed to fresh or frozen is not appropriate for a general entry). It should be more general and talk about the common base ingredients.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by AUSU-Comm (talk • contribs) 01:50, 29 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm a Quebecker myself and can confirm that creamed corn is more than common, in Québec at least. This can easily be confirmed by a quick google search of paté chinois wich will turn this recipie as first hit (notice the .qc.ca), and that uses "maïs crémeux", or creamed corn only. Same thing with the first english version for shepherd's pie from food.com. TheSpooler (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

move was a mistake
This article should not have been moved. The food is called Pate Chinois. Yes, that could literally be translated to "Chinese Pie" but it is rarely (if ever) called "Chinese Pie." A google comparison shows about 3000 entries for Chinese Pie, and 79,000 for "Pate Chinois." For comparison, please note that escargot has its own article, even thought it COULD be literally translated as "Snails."

Does anyone oppose me moving it back? - TheMightyQuill (talk) 17:33, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In the United States it is called Chinese Pie. Since both the French and English version of the name are in common use, (not just an English translation of an exclusively French name), then WP:NAME requires the article name to be the English one in the English wikipedia.  Google hits are not the arbiter of these things.  Many of the google hits under pate chinois are actually for Shepard's Pie, a different dish altogether, which is called the same name by some French-speaking people. JERRY talk contribs 23:14, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * In my experience, "pate chinois" is the English word for it, at least in Canada. I would also have thought it is much more common.  Is Chinese pie common in New England?  --JGGardiner (talk) 10:35, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * My French-Canadian family, the portion that lives in Maine, at least, calls it Chinese Pie when they are speaking English. The exact same dish is called Shepherd's Pie by my Irish grandmother. I always thought my family was a little weird for calling it Chinese Pie, and this article is so interesting becuase it finally gives a possible etymology for why this came about.  I would suggest not merging or moving it. ```deoboed  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.45.171.210 (talk) 13:00, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

French Canadian
"Chinese pie, (French: pâté chinois) is a French Canadian dish" If it's a French Canadian dish, should it not be called "Paté Chinois"? Jeeze, and they call Quebecers Language Nazis.

The LANGUAGE is what makes this article interesting (the variations in recipe probably have little to do with the language or name): Cottage/Shepperd's Pie, followed by Paté Chinois (a mutation of the former), followed by Chinese Pie (a mutation of the mutation). I'm curious, is Chinese Pie really that common in New England?

I think the railway explanation is more likely. First, there would be way more French Canadians exposed to working on the Railway than to the town of China.

Second, the town of China explanation requires French Canadians to knowingly take an English recipe and give it a joke name, then simultaneously have it adopted in Quebec and anglicize it in New England within a short time span.

I'm no expert in Linguistic change but the time span and order seem more plausible in the Railway theory. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathieudovan (talk • contribs) 14:55, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

In my house, we made a dish we called "Junk". Both my parents grew up in French Canadian homes in Connecticut and Junk was a common family dish. It was a dish I was embarrassed to talk about with friends. That is, until my future husband, a French Canadian from Montreal joined us for a quick meal. He called our Junk dish Pate Chinois, laughing at our literal translation for the dish. I had no idea what Shepard's Pie was. It is hardly politically correct, but Quebecers used to call things that were poorly made "Mets Chinois". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.168.198.163 (talk) 01:04, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

"Chinese Pie"
I don't know which part of French Canada the individual below is from, but in Quebec pâté chinois is nearly always is made with corn and usually with creamed corn. It is always called Shepherd's Pie in English. If it is called "Chinese Pie" somewhere, then I have never seen it.

Peas instead of corn are quite common in other parts of Canada, but then again that's "Shepherd's Pie"

Drgoochmobile (talk) 18:13, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Clean-up? - Name Origins
The "name origins" section seems really anecdoctal (for example, what is the article that was published?) and could be edited for clarity. There must be a more efficient way to include the examples such as "Boston cream pie" and "French fries." The whole additional section at the end seems like it was meant for the discussion section and not the actual article. Writers, can you fix this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.235.188.164 (talk) 21:04, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

The story I've heard in Montreal, which is as well documented as the one here, rests on the plain fact that Lachine Quebec is adjacent to Montreal. As the Wikipedia article Lachine, Quebec documents, Lachine was ironically named for explorers trying to reach China through it. So Pâté chinois is a humorously exotic name for very plain Quebec food. Colin McLarty (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 02:12, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Still no fix on this, lots of conjecture with no references anywhere.--Haem0nculus (talk) 22:28, 13 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Agreed. It's been 10 years that this section has hung around with no sources, so I've removed the unsourced material.
 * Moreover, the earliest reference I was able to find to "pâté chinois" in Google Books is from 1955 -- which is a long long time after the building of the transcontinental railroad. --Macrakis (talk) 18:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Pâté chinois does not have the same origins as Shepherd's pie
For years, annoying random people have proposed to merge Pâté chinois and Shepherds pie together. They must understand something: the origins of Pâté chinois are unknown. All that is known about Pâté chinois is that its earliest appearance was in the 1930s. It has no confirmed appearances before then. However, Shepherd's pie does. Its first confirmed appearance was in 1791 as Cottage pie (it only began to be called Shepherds pie in 1854). Furthermore, many authors and historians have researched facts surrounding Pâté chinois to try to pinpoint its origins and you'll notice that out of all the theories that exist (Railway Hypothesis, South China Hypothesis, Pemiccan Hypothesis, LaSalle's Failed Expedition Hypothesis, Échine Hypothesis), none of them propose that Pâté chinois is a derived form of Shepherd's pie (although one does propose it may have been derived from pemiccan surprisingly). People who constantly suggest to merge these two articles together just see two dishes that are kind of similar, think they're experts because of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and think to themselves: "This one looks like that one! They must be the same!!". If they were in charge, I imagine they would want to merge the Crocodile and Alligator pages based on this logic. Until the origins of Pâté chinois are discovered by actual smart people like researchers or historians, I suggest we leave this Pâté chinois page alone. If they end up discovering that Pâté chinois is Shepherds pie somehow, then you can feel free to merge. And no, the people in charge of that restaurant you visited in Montreal that translated Shepherds pie into Pâté chinois on their English menu are not researchers or historians. Safyrr (talk) 03:34, 24 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Most of the "hypotheses" about the origin of Pâté chinois seem to be rather tendentious and frankly far-fetched. As you point out, it isn't documented before 1930, so connecting it to La Salle is really tirer sur la ficelle. These "theories" are also sourced to non-reliable sources, though some of them refer to apparently more reliable sources, which need to be consulted.
 * But even if the origin of pâté chinois is different from the origin of shepherd's pie, that's no reason not to merge. We have no reason to believe that all different kinds of sausage were invented at the same place and time, and yet we cover them together (though of course we also cover notable variants separately).
 * By the way, we try to be civil around here, and not disparage other editors by calling them "annoying" and accusing them of suffering from Dunning-Kruger. --Macrakis (talk) 03:50, 24 February 2021 (UTC)


 * How you feel about the hypotheses is just your opinion (I also think the LaSalle one is dumb if it makes you feel better). This is what people who have researched this stuff -unlike us- have come up with. I hope you have checked out the books too, not just the webpages. If people want to merge this page with Shepherds pie because it is the same dish class, we cannot call this new page "Shepherds pie". We dont know if Pâté chinois is Shepherds pie. It could have completely different origins and thus be a different thing. Since the dish is one of the most popular and famous traditional Quebecois dishes, the origins are of cultural and historical importance. So, the page, after fusion, should be renamed something more general, like "Savoury pies" or something like that. The Sausage page is called "Sausages" after all, not "Black Pudding" or "Chorizo". I would agree with that. Safyrr (talk) 16:35, 24 February 2021 (UTC)