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.