The history of the mince pie

They’re the harbinger of the festive season and seem to appear on shop shelves earlier and earlier each year. When done right, they’re buttery little pastry parcels bulging with sweet, juicy, plump fruits drenched in booze, spice and citrusy flavour – done wrong, they can be limp, claggy and cloying. But one thing’s for sure – mince pies are the poster boy for Christmas in the UK, and in 2018 we chomped our way through 220 million of them.

Mince pies haven’t always been the delicate, sweet little things they are today, however. While they’ve been baked for Christmas since the Middle Ages, the recipe has evolved hugely over the centuries, changing with our personal tastes and what was available to the average baker. They certainly share a few key similarities, but you’d have to be seriously wealthy to be able to afford all the sugar and other luxurious ingredients that go into a modern-day mince pie back then.

Pies are arguably Britain’s most iconic and historical foodstuff, but the pastry was never originally meant to be eaten. Instead, it provided a sort of box made of flour and water for the filling to be kept in – far too hard and unappetising to eat. The filling would be baked inside, then hot fat would be poured in a hole in the top of the crust to seal it and preserve it for the months ahead (a little like pork pies and the aspic jelly you find around the meat).

These ‘pyes’ were often very large, suited to feeding a crowd, and depending on how wealthy you were would either be filled with questionable odds and ends or more luxurious ingredients. In the Middle Ages, those who could afford it had a particular taste for meats combined with fragrant spices and plenty of sweet fruits and honey. There weren’t really such things as desserts back then, as sweet ingredients were expensive and hard to come by, so savoury dishes were given added sweetness by those who could afford it instead. Sugar was incredibly difficult to source, so sweetness would generally come from dried fruits and honey. This had an added bonus of helping to preserve the meat for longer, in the days before refrigeration.

Along with imported dried fruits, spices were another way for the wealthy to show off about how much money they had. Importing ingredients such as dried ginger, saffron, figs and dates was incredibly expensive, but for those with coins to spare it was an extravagance they could afford. Even then, they were never a regular treat – you’d only find them served at special occasions such as Christmas and Easter.