Confusing in name and only ever used at Christmas, mincemeat is probably bought (or made) by 90% of British households. The origins of the mince pie date back to the 13th century and middle eastern meat, fruit and spice pies brought back by traders. At least we assume they returned with the recipes and a few crumbs.
Jane Grigson, writing in the 70s, still advocates minced steak in your Christmas mincemeat - she claims you can hardly tell it's there under all the fruit, sugar and alcohol, but that the resulting pies go quicker than usual. Even now, much commercial mincemeat includes suet or other animal fat. But fortunately only one of our recipes below absolutely cannot be made vegan.
I know many people who say they don't like mince pies. We're here to resurrect the reputation of these unjustly vilified puddings.
Where have they gone wrong? With shop-bought pies there's far too much sugar, not a crisp enough pastry, and not nearly enough rum butter - yes, that's proper dark rum butter made with crunchy brown sugar - with a kick and a bite to it, not namby pamby brandy butter that doesn't taste of anything and owing to the icing sugar has no texture either.
Our top tips:
- Make your own pastry. It should not be sweetened - there's enough of that in the filling.
- Don't make your own mincemeat unless you're a sadist or someone who can't eat shop-bought. Instead mix a jar of ready-made mincemeat with two grated apples, dessert, cooking, or one of each depending how sour you like your sweets.
- If you don't have a fancy fluted cutter, just cut round a cup or glass.
- To eat, prise off the top, put slightly too much rum butter in, and cram the lid back on. Excess rum butter can also be eaten on oatcakes, bananas, etc. It would probably even improve sprouts.
- Don't make too many at once - the shortness of the shortcrust pastry means they go stale and don't keep well.
We have heard that pear pies go down very well with people who really hate dried fruit and are never going to like mince pies. Apple and candied peel is also a good standby, and not too dark and chewy like most dried fruit-based pies. And crucially it still goes with rum butter, so the pirates stay happy.
Ideal for those who really can't abide mincemeat, even when the mince pies are homemade and hot out of the oven!
This recipe comes courtesy of Colette, one of Daily Info's intrepid band of reviewers.
SHORTCRUST PASTRY
200 g plain flour
200 g self-raising flour
200 g margarine (I use Stork on the block - not the tub version. Block Stork is dairy-free so suits a few in our house)
Pinch of salt
1 egg
Water to mix
FILLING
A few ripe (but not over-ripe) pears (I use Conference pears). Once pastry is made, peel and cut pears into very small cubes/pieces.
You’ll need a bun / mincepies tray tin.
Heat oven to 200C / gas 6.
Sieve flours and salt. Chop up margarine and rub into flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Beat egg (keep back a little of the egg for brushing top of pies). Add most of egg and enough water to make a pastry dough that’s not too sticky. If you have time, wrap pastry in cling film and leave in fridge for a while.
Roll out pastry with a dusting of flour on the worktop and in the rolling pin. Cut pastry into larger and small circles. Put the larger circle at the bottom of the bun tray spaces. Fill with diced pear. Dampen edge of pastry case and put smaller pastry lids on top.
Brush top of pies with the leftover egg and a little milk (or milk substitute in our case).
Bake for 15-20 minutes (times and temperature depend on your oven).
Remove and put on a rack to cool.
******
I don’t dust them with icing sugar - but some people might like to.
For vegans, instead of egg, just use water to bind the pastry, and brush tops of pies with milk substitute.
To vary: add a little cinnamon to the pear.
Compulsory in our house: have with a glass of mulled wine on Christmas Eve!
This is much quicker than making mince pies! Beware the ferociously volcanic heat though - when these first come out of the oven the sugar syrup makes them fairly lethal.
Apples - one per person
Christmas mincemeat
Calvados/brandy/rum/ginger wine/amaretto etc (optional, of course)
Brown sugar / marzipan
Heat oven to 200C or gas 6.
With apples, you have a choice of dessert or cooking. Of course this affects the taste, but also the texture, as Bramleys cook down to snow, whereas most dessert apples stay quite solid when cooked. It's up to you what you prefer, but keeping the skin on means they'll still be servable whichever way they behave!
Core your apples, but don't peel them, which is easy if you have a fancy apple corer lurking in a drawer, or you can do it the messy way with a small sharp knife. It doesn't matter if you make the core hole a little bigger than it needs to be - it'll fit more filling. And if you can manage not to pierce all the way down to the bottom, even better! Though this is practically impossible.
Fill the central hole with mincemeat, and a glug of alcohol if you wish. Place on top a good sprinkling of brown sugar, or a plug of marzipan.
Bake for 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your apples (test if they're soft and done by sticking something sharp in them).
Serve each person an apple, and some of the delicious sludge from the bottom, with icecream or custard. Remember to warn everyone not to burn their mouths. Revel in the pastryless simplicity of this cosy winter pudding!
(There are of course hundreds of variations of this dish - including hazlenuts, using currants and butter rather than mincemeat, etc. But this is probably the classic. And BBC Good Food seems to think it's an ideal pudding for children to make.
You can also bake quinces in much the same way, though of course they take about five times as long. They go particularly well with amaretto and marzipan.)
From River Cottage Meat by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
For this recipe, a pair of pork tenderloins are opened out to flatten them, then sandwiched together with sweet mincemeat, sausagemeat and chestnuts. Tenderloins are often relatively cheap cuts, and have very little fat on so they can be prone to dryness. The stuffing solves that!
2 pork tenderloin fillets
2 tbsp olive oil
lemon juice
125g christmas mincemeat (HFW says preferably homemade, but we used Robertson's)
125g cooked chestnuts, roughly chopped
250g sausage meat (approx 4 fat sausages' worth)
125g dried apricots
3 onions, halved
For the sauce:
Either 3tbps double cream*
OR 200ml pork/chicken stock and 5tbsp double cream
1tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp red currant jelly
lemon juice
*To make this dairy-free, cashew cream works very well.
Take 100g cashews. Bring to the boil, add a squeeze of lemon, turn off the heat and allow to soak for 15 mins. Pour off the water, and blend to a thick cream consistency.
Preheat the oven to 220C or gas 7.
To open out the tenderloins, cut each one as follows. Make the first cut lengthways, in the middle, two thirds of the way through. Open up like a book. In each opened half, make another small cut to open out the thickest part. Try not to cut through too hard or the finished item will be hard to carve neatly.
With the cut sides facing up, rub each with olive oil, season with black pepper, squeeze lemon juice over, and spread mincemeat evenly over each half as if you're spreading jam on bread.
Mix the sausage meat and the chestnuts, and spread this mixture over one of the tenderloins. Sandwich the tenderloins together with the filling and mincemeat in between.
Using cooking string (cotton string or anything that won't melt in the oven!) tie around the mix 5 or 6 times, enough to hold it together but not so hard you squeeze the filling out.
Rub more oil over the finished parcel, and season with more black pepper. Stand it in the middle of a sheet of foil on the halved onions, in a baking dish, and scrunch the foil up around the sides to hold the juices in, but not to cover the meat. The onions should stop the meat standing in the juice as that can toughen it.
Roast for 15 mins, baste the meat with the juice that's come out so far, and put back in the oven, turning the heat down to 180C / gas 4.
Cook for another 50 minutes, basting every ten minutes. (This is not a dish you can go away and leave unsupervised - it's quite labour intensive!) The pork should now all be tender, and the top golden. The syrupy mincemeat in the juice helps to colour the skin nicely.
Put the meat on a board to rest while you make the sauce. Tip the juices into a small saucepan. (The foil helps this procedure.)
For a quick sauce: mix 2-3 tbsp cream, half the cinnamon, the redcurrant jelly and lemon juice, and bring to the boil, whisking as you go. Taste and add more salt, pepper, lemon, or cinnamon as you think fit.
For a more substantial sauce: add the stock to the roasting juices, and boil hard to reduce by half. Add 5tbsp cream and 1tsp cinnamon, the redcurrant jelly and lemon juice, and proceed as above.
Carve slices of pork around 1cm thick and serve 2-3 per person. This is very good with steamed savoy cabbage, steamed leek slices, mashed potato, apple slices gently fried in butter, and of course the sauce poured over.
It does have that Christmassy sweet, spicy tang, but not as much as you'd think - this is definitely a full-hearted savoury dish!
The season of giving
For those looking to give something back this Christmas, here's our charitable suggestion of the day:
Welcome to Daily Info’s 2024 Advent Calendar – 24 days of events to celebrate the festive period and get ready to ring in the New Year!
This year's calendar offers a mix of Christmas activities - pantos, comedy shows, carol concerts etc, taking in traditions in Oxford and the wider area, as well as free diversions in December and some of the best happenings to book ahead for in 2025.
