The Queen's pastry chef has revealed her secret mince pie recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the significance of the mince pie? ›

They were made from 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his disciples and were all symbolic to the Christmas story. As well as dried fruit such as raisins, prunes and figs, they included lamb or mutton to represent the shepherds and spices (cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg) for the Wise Men.

TAKE ONE COFFIN…

Our mince pies undoubtedly have medieval origins, although we would not immediately recognise them. Pie crusts were known as coffins, and used as a vessel to cook delicate foods or house pre-boiled meat fillings. Pastry was little more than flour mixed with water to form a mouldable dough.

The reason mincemeat is called meat is because that's exactly what it used to be: most often mutton, but also beef, rabbit, pork or game. Mince pies were first served in the early middle ages, and the pies were quite sizeable, filled with a mixture of finely minced meat, chopped up fruit and a preserving liquid.

Nowadays, it's easy to find mincemeat pies still made with beef suet and a small amount of minced meats (usually beef). All-vegetarian mincemeat pies are readily available as well, especially if you purchase a premade jar of mincemeat filling.

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.

The original mince pies were oblong crib shapes decorated with a baby Jesus on top. The contents represent the gifts of the Magi to the Christ child, spices and plump middle eastern fruits.

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.

A coffin or coffyn referred to a container made of pastry, a precursor of the modern pie crust, and food was served in the coffin it had been cooked in. The first printed use of the word coffin as a box for a corpse appeared later, in the 16th century. Historians trace pies back to ancient times.

But the mincemeat I'm talking about is thick, sweet, spicy and brown; a sludge of raisins, booze, orange peels, allspice and other aromatics. Some recipes also involve apples, and almost all varieties include shredded beef and suet.

The mince pie was originally filled with meat but it's believed that it wasn't until the late Victorian period and the early 20th century that mince pies shifted to a pie made from fruit fillings. Is it still illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day?

Is mincemeat healthy? ›

Not only is mince an incredibly versatile meat, it is also packed full of nutrients that can help support good health and wellbeing. With mince, you don't need to eat a lot of it to get the nutritional goodness.

All About Mincemeat: The Fabulous Filling for Mince Pies

These days, mincemeat is made with a mixture of dried fruit, such as raisins and currants, candied fruit peels, lemon and orange zest, finely chopped apple, brandy, warming spices, and the rendered animal fat suet (or a vegetarian substitute).

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.

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.

They became a popular treat around the festive period thanks to a tradition from the middle ages, which saw people eat a mince pie for 12 days from Christmas day to Twelfth Night. Doing this was believed to bring you happiness for the next 12 months.

For a true mince, the effect is to create a closely bonded mixture of ingredients and a soft or pasty texture. However, in many recipes, the intention is for firmer foods such as onions and other root vegetables to remain in individual chunks when minced.

A Brief History of the Shepherd's Pie

Shepherd's Pie is believed to have been invented in the early 1800s. During this time, housewives were struggling to find innovative ways to recycle the leftovers that their husbands and kids had turned up their noses at. Back then, the struggle was real just as it is today.

Mince pies were once made from actual minced meat mixed with fruit and spices, and known as “mutton” or “shrid” pies (due to the shredded suet). Boiled beef tongue was an essential ingredient in the 16th century. It's said that by the Victorian era, the pies were mostly sweet variations.