The Cottage Pie has emerged as the shock favourite pie of the UK

The Cottage Pie has emerged as the shock favourite pie of the UK after new research trawled the nations pie-eating habits ahead of Pie Week.

Whether it’s a traditional pie down at a country pub, it’s been lovingly homemade or eaten routinely on a cold day at the football, the pie is one of the UK’s favourite dishes and celebrated annually from March 2 – March 8, before traditional ‘Pi Day’ on March 14.

But what is Britain’s favourite pie?

Using BBC Good Food’s favourites recipes and Google trends data, Blueclaw have produced new research that suggests that the cottage pie (though not a traditional pie) is the joint-most popular pie in the UK, with the chicken pie level and the apple pie in third place.

The data, from media agency Blueclaw shows that out of searches in the UK for pie recipes (using the most popular recipes as voted for by users), across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the cottage pie and chicken pie accounts for 62% of searches, while the apple pie is searched for by 16% of users.

The steak pie is a clear winner in Scotland at 33%, while cottage pies are most popular in Wales having accounted for 38% of the searches – the most popular in any region.

However steak and chicken are not even the most common pie fillings, when it comes to breaking down each pie on Good Food by contents.

Of the UK’s top-rated pies, pork and bacon pies account for 14.9% of the recipes on there, while chicken is surprisingly just 13.2% and beef and steak pies are even less common at 11.5%.

The two least popular fillings are sausage (5.2%) and fish (9.8%).