Mincemeat Pie Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What are the ingredients in mincemeat pie? ›

Mincemeat

Mince pie / Main ingredient

A mince pie (also mincemeat pie in North America, and fruit mince pie in Australia and New Zealand) is a sweet pie of English origin filled with mincemeat, being a mixture of fruit, spices and suet. The pies are traditionally served during the Christmas season in much of the English-speaking world.

Traditions, folklore and superstitions

Stirring the mincemeat was quite an event, and English tradition dictates that it should only be stirred clockwise. Stirring the mincemeat anti-clockwise would lead to bad luck and poor fortune in the coming 12 months.

Go with the tradition and eat a dozen

There is a tradition of eating one mince pie each day over the 12 days of Christmas from Christmas Eve to 5 January.

Mincemeat is a combination of chopped dried fruits, spices, sugar, nuts, distilled spirits, a fat of some type and sometimes meat. The name is a carryover from 15th century England when mincemeat did indeed have meat in the mix; in fact, the whole point of mincemeat was to preserve meat with sugar and alcohol.

We all love munching on mince pies but have you ever wondered why their filling is called 'mincemeat' even though there's no meat in it? This is because long ago mince pies actually did have meat in them. They went by different names like 'mutton pie,' 'shrid pie,' or 'Christmas pie. '

Mincemeat isn't difficult to make, but it has a lot of ingredients, which can make it expensive to produce in small batches, and it requires at least a day's advance planning to let the ingredients sit.

A pie full of spices and meat appears in 1390 in A Forme of Cury, an English cookbook originally written on a scroll, under the name “tartes of flesh”. To make these morsels, cooks were instructed to grind up pork, hard-boiled eggs, and cheese, before mixing them with spices, saffron, and sugar.

It has been claimed that eating the snack is illegal in England if done so on Christmas Day. The tradition comes from the time of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, when mince pies were banned at Christmas, along with other tasty treats. Cromwell wanted to tackle gluttony in England.

When thickening a fruit pie filling, there are several options to consider. Very often flour or cornstarch is used, but in certain instances tapioca, arrowroot and potato starch can also help achieve the desired consistency.

How do you jazz up mincemeat? ›

Heat a pile of mincemeat in a pan with sugar, orange and lemon juice, orange peel, half a cinnamon stick and brandy, wait for it to thicken and then stir in some whipping cream.

Going on to how one should formally eat a mince pie, she explains: 'One would pick up the mince pie with a thumb and first finger, and lift [it] away from the plate. 'The mince pie is crumbly, so make sure anything that falls from the mince pie falls onto your plate.

And it turns out we are not alone! With the national average for mince pie devourment sitting at a hefty 19 per person¹, and total UK annual consumption estimates sitting somewhere between 800m and a staggering 1 billion², it's clear that we're a nation of mince pie lovers.

Why do we eat mince pies at Christmas? Mince pies were originally made to celebrate Jesus. They were oblong in shape to represent the manger that Jesus slept in as a baby and have a 'pastry baby Jesus' carved into the pastry. Traditionally one mince pie is eaten for the Twelve days of Christmas.

Ingredients: Water, Corn Syrup, Raisins, Dried Apples, Molasses, Corn Starch Modified, Distilled Vinegar, Dried Orange And Lemon Peel, Salt, Spices, Beef, Fruit Pectin, Natural Flavor. Find in a store near you!

Mince pies are high in calories, saturated fat and sugar because of the pastry case, as well as the suet and sugar in the mincemeat filling. If you're baking your own, only use pastry for the base and leave the top open, just add a small star of pastry or use a lower-fat pastry, such as filo.

Martin Fone investigates the most traditional seasonal food of all, mince pies, and finds that they really did contain meat at one time in the past. Just be grateful you never got served one made with fish...