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What ingredients are in a minced pie? ›

Mincemeat

Mince pie / Main ingredient

Mincemeat is a mixture of chopped dried fruit, distilled spirits and spices, and often beef suet, usually used as a pie or pastry filling. Mincemeat formerly contained meat, notably beef or venison. Many modern recipes replace the suet with vegetable shortening.

Wikipedia

Take slightly smaller balls of pastry than before and pat them out between your hands to make round lids, big enough to cover the pies. Top the pies with their lids, pressing the edges gently together to seal – you don't need to seal them with milk or egg as they will stick on their own.

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.

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.

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).

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...

With scissors or a sharp knife, cut a small cross in the centre of each pie, so the steam can escape. This stops the mincemeat leaking from the sides of the pie (it leaks upwards instead). Brush the top of each pie with milk, or use beaten egg if you have the energy to beat one.

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.

The main ingredients in pastry are flour and fat. The gluten in the flour gives pastry its texture, while fat offers flavour. If the fat melts before a strong gluten structure has formed, the pastry will end up soggy.

A mince pie, though originally containing meat, is a sweet pie, with pastry top and bottom, filled with a sweet mixture of dried fruit, peel, commonly alcohol like brandy, and small pieces of suet( an animal fat, and reminder of a mince pie's meat origins). This sweet mixture is ( confusingly) called 'mincemeat'.

What is the difference between mince pie and mincemeat pie? ›

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.

So why has mince meat pie all but vanished in America? Well, the pie strayed from its roots, and it has a rather strange ingredient called suet. Modern day mince meat pie contains no meat, sometimes no alcohol, and is a wimpy salute to the hearty, beefy pie of mince meat history.

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.

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.

One bite of a home-made shortcrust pastry mince pie and you'll never want to buy them again. Now you've nailed the pastry, put it to good use with one of our mince pie recipes including date and apple, brownie and frangipane versions.

They are two completely different kinds of pies. Mince pie, also known as mincemeat pie, is made of fruits and contains no meat. It is sweet. A meat pie is savory or spicy and is usually a fried pie, filled with ground meat and onions, spices like cumin, chili peppers, etc.

Traditionally mince pies used to be meat and suet (yummy!!) and some recipes still call for the latter but shop-bought ones tend to contain butter and eggs.

Experts say that despite the notion of a sumptuous, brandy-laden mince pie, there isn't much alcohol in the regular shop-bought pies. Alcohol helps to give the pies a 'robust' flavour, but by the time they have been cooked, there isn't much spirit left. The advice is to check the ingredients carefully when buying.