A controversial pie has been voted the UK's favourite - here's the full list

The cottage pie has emerged as the UK's favourite, according to new research conducted for this year's National Pie Week.

From traditional pub grub to football fare, the pie is one of the UK's most loved dishes and there's no better time to tuck into one than during National Pie Week, which runs until 8 March 2020.

Britain’s favourite pie by region

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

Favourite fillings

The data 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 per cent of searches, while the apple pie is searched for by 16 per cent of users.

The steak pie is a clear winner in Scotland, at 33 per cent, while cottage pies are most popular in Wales, having accounted for 38 per cent 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 BBC Good Food by contents.

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

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