Mince pies shortcrust pastry (2024)

FAQs

What pastry are mince pies made of? ›

Mincemeat encased in Jus-Rol shortcrust pastry – the perfect Christmas recipe.

If you are making a pie with a crust you'll need to decide which type of pastry to go for. Shortcrust pastry is the best for pies that fully encase a filling as they tend to be firmer and less likely to leak. Puff pastry is great if you prefer just a pastry lid on top of the filling.

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.

They were stuffed with meats like mutton, rabbit, and pork which is why the filling is known as "mincemeat." Even as far back as 1390 a recipe in "A Forme of Cury" featured a pie filled with a mixture of ground pork, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, saffron, and sugar.

That's the beauty of them! A good mince pie is a delicately spiced, sumptuously light fruit filling encased in a buttery, crumbly crust. They're like souffles in that they're incredibly easy to do badly, but when baked properly they are a gustatory delight!

Pie crust, or shortcrust pastry, is incredibly versatile and can be used in a wide variety of sweet and savory dishes. Here are just a few of the many ways you can use this delicious dough: Pies: Of course, the most classic use for pie crust is in pies!

Shortcrust pastry can be used to make both sweet and savory pies such as apple pie, quiche, lemon meringue or chicken pie. A sweetened version – using butter – is used in making spritz cookies. Shortcrust pastry recipes usually call for twice as much flour as fat by weight.

Blind baking sees you pre-baking your pastry before adding any fillings to it. It's a baking technique usually used for short-crust pastry recipes (whether that's a savoury pie, a quiche or a pudding-perfect flan) and it works wonders for preventing undercooked bases.

By the 18th century it was more likely to be tongue or even tripe, and in the 19th century it was minced beef. It was not until the late Victorian period and early 20th Century that mince pies dropped the meat and had all fruit fillings (albeit with suet). Even today there are traditions associated with mince pies.

What was the original mincemeat pie made of? ›

In the Middle Ages, chopped meat, liver, or fish, along with chopped hard-boiled eggs and ginger were tucked into small pastries called chewette, according to the “Oxford Companion to Food.” Dried fruits were commonly added and by the 16th century, the name changed to minced or shred pies, which were made for Christmas ...

The "mince" in mincemeat comes from the Middle English mincen, and the Old French mincier both traceable to the Vulgar Latin minutiare, meaning chop finely. The word mincemeat is an adaptation of an earlier term minced meat, meaning finely chopped meat. Meat was also a term for food in general, not only animal flesh.

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.

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.

Fill each pie level with mincemeat, don't overfill as the pies have a tendency to leak and glue themselves to the tins if you do. Dip your finger in the egg and run around the edge of each mince pie and top with a lid, pressing gently together to seal.

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.

Ingredients included dried fruits like raisins prunes and figs, lamb or mutton (representing the shepherds) and spices like cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg (for the Wise Men). By late Victorian England, mince pies ceased to contain meat and had all fruit fillings (with suet).

Mincemeat

Mince pie / Main ingredient

Oliver Cromwell banned mince pies and other Christmas treats in the 1650's in order to tackle gluttony. The ban didn't survive for long and the act of eating mince pies is now just a myth.