These are our best mince pie recipes for Christmas 2023 (2024)

FAQs

How many mince pies should you eat on the 12 days of Christmas? ›

Go with the tradition and eat a dozen

There is a tradition of eating one mince pie each day over the 12 days of Christmas from Christmas Eve to 5 January.

To spread the joy, it was tradition in England that each member of the family gave the mixture a stir, while making a wish. And if you wanted to be ensure good health and happiness in the upcoming year, you should eat one mince pie every day for the Twelve Days of Christmas, from Christmas Eve until the 5th of January.

As they are home-made they do not keep quite as long as commercial mince pies and we suggest that you keep them in an airtight container for up to one week. The baked mince pies do freeze very well and can be frozen for up to 3 months.

The early mince pie was known by several names, including "mutton pie", "shrid pie" and "Christmas pie". Typically, its ingredients were a mixture of minced meat, suet, a range of fruits, and spices, such as cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Christmas in numbers

Brits eat approximately 175 million mince pies over Christmas, using 175 tonnes of aluminium packaging. The UK uses 227,000 miles of wrapping paper each year.

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.

Mince pies are not commonly consumed in the US outside of the New England region. Perhaps if more Americans were familiar with them they would be banned.

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.

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.

You can freeze mince pies for up to three months. After this, the changes to the taste and texture will affect the mince pies too much. A great idea when it comes to Christmas preparations is to make your mince pies in September or October, then defrost them in time for the festive season.

Is it better to freeze mince pies cooked or uncooked? ›

Get ahead: Freeze uncooked pies in their tins for up to three months, wrapped in clingfilm. Bake from frozen as in step 4, allowing 5min extra. Or, pack cooked pies (without icing sugar) into freezerproof boxes. Freeze for up to three months.

Will keep in the freezer for up to 3 months. To cook, heat oven to 200C/180C fan/ gas 6. Remove the mince pies from the freezer and brush the top of each with a little milk.

We all love munching on mince pies but have you ever wondered why their filling is called 'mincemeat' even though there's no meat in it? This is because long ago mince pies actually did have meat in them. They went by different names like 'mutton pie,' 'shrid pie,' or 'Christmas pie. '

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.

They became a popular treat around the festive period thanks to a tradition from the middle ages, which saw people eat a mince pie for 12 days from Christmas day to Twelfth Night. Doing this was believed to bring you happiness for the next 12 months.

How many mince pies should you eat on the 12 days of Christmas? Back in the day it was thought lucky to eat one mince pie on each of the twelve days of Christmas. How many mince pies are eaten in the UK every Christmas? According to Good Housekeeping nearly 800 million mince pies are eaten in the UK each year.

Simplified, a family should have one full pie for every six guests at the table.

On average, Brits each get through 14 mince pies during the festive season - but one in 100 confessed to scoffing up to 50 of the delicacies over the period. It also emerged that 57 per cent consider the mincemeat to be the best bit, while four in 10 are seduced by the buttery pastry.

It seems that about 50% of a mince pie's weight is due to the mincemeat, and this tends to be mostly apple. Stands to reason that about 160g of mince pies is one of your 5-a-day; that's about 2½ of those little mince pies from a 6-pack.