tamale pie

4.4

A baked dish of seasoned meat and vegetables topped with cornbread

noun
/təˈmɑːleɪ paɪ/

: pastel de tamal

My grandmother makes tamale pie every Christmas as part of our family tradition.

Examples

Have you ever tried tamale pie?
For dinner, we enjoyed a delicious tamale pie topped with melted cheese and jalapeños.
The recipe combines ground beef, tomatoes, and cornmeal to create a hearty tamale pie.
We had a delicious tamale pie for dinner.
This tamale pie is filled with tender beef, spices, and fresh vegetables.
At the potluck, she brought her famous tamale pie, which everyone loved.
The tamale pie, topped with golden cornbread, was the highlight of the dinner.

Synonyms

pie

vstamale pie

696 1.0

A baked pastry with a sweet or savory filling

is specifically a casserole topped with cornbread rather than baked in pastry

meat pie

vstamale pie

5 1.0

A baked dish of cooked meat inside pastry, usually eaten hot

is a savory casserole topped with cornbread rather than a pastry crust

How Filling

feast

162 1.9

casserole

54 2.8

tamale pie

4.4

tamale

27 5.7

snack

471 1.0

Surface Forms

tamale pie singular

tamale pies plural

Morphology

tamale + pie

The meaning is directly compositional: a B1 learner who knows 'tamale' (a cornmeal dish with fillings) and 'pie' (a filled savory or sweet dish) will readily infer this is a pie-style dish made with tamale ingredients. Although in practice it may take the form of a casserole rather than a traditional pastry crust, the tamale+pie combination follows straightforward culinary composition and is therefore comprehensible from its parts.

Etymology

Tamale pie may come from taking a Mexican tamale and turning it into a baked pie-style dish by spreading the tamale filling in a pan instead of wrapping it. Imagine spicy meat and corn spread like a pie and topped with cornbread, and that picture explains why the name now means 'a baked dish with the taste of tamales'.