Mince Pies Recipe

Mince pies are a very traditional British Christmas offering going back hundreds of years. Skip the history and background and go straight to the recipe or video by hitting either button above.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

What are Mince Pies?

Traditional mince pies are little cases of crumbly shortcrust pastry filled with a mix of spiced fruit, with or without alcohol. They have long been a Christmas treat here in the UK.

In fact, over the last decade or two, along with Christmas decorations, they’ve started appearing in our shops as early as September. Almost like marking the start of autumn.

The mince pie filling is a mix of dried fruit like raisins and sultanas, and various other ingredients. But modern creations can also have dried cranberries or various fresh citrus fruit.

My kids and I are huge fans of these sweet treats, and I find myself baking them fairly often from around October. Or buying them!

This traditional mince pies recipe is for all you guys who can’t get it where you are, or would prefer to make them yourself!

You’ll find the homemade mincemeat recipe here. But if you have access to shop bought, and want to use that, by all means.

History of Mince Pies

It’s too fascinating not to write about, so go get a cup of Java (or chai), sit back and enjoy.

So what is the origin of mince pies? Many food historians believe that the idea came from the Middle East via the returning crusaders in the 12th and 13th centuries. Certainly in the 13th century text, Kitāb al-Ṭabīkh, there are many examples of crushed dried fruit and nuts sandwiched between pastry and flatbreads. Perhaps this was the starting point?

But our early mincemeat pies weren’t solely fruit based, they were, in fact, filled with finely chopped meat and spices, hence the name, mince pie. One of the earliest mentions of such a mincemeat pie is in the Forme of Cury, the oldest English cookery book, attributed to King Richard II’s mastercooks, from the 14th century. I’ve mentioned it a couple of times here on LinsFood.

The book has many instances of finely chopped meat encased in pastry. And the one that strikes me as the closest ancestor of our mince pie is the simply named tartletes. As you can see from the image below, it has ground veal, eggs, prunes, dates, raisins, spices and sugar. All baked in a pastry case.

Rather like fruity empanadas, don’t you think? But these original mincemeat pies would have been large pies.

British Mince Pies

As time went by, the mincemeat tarts of old evolved, and became celebratory dishes, as early as 1413, when it was made for the coronation of Henry V. They became associated with Christmas. So much so, that some of these early Christmas pies took on rectangular or oval shapes to reflect Jesus’ crib or manger, with a pastry baby Jesus. Which is just a bit creepy, maybe.

Somewhere along the line though, its history took a dark turn, when Christmas and everything fun that it entailed, was clamped down during Oliver Cromwell’s reign in the 17th century. While they were never quite outlawed, as sometimes erroneously claimed, these sweet treats became rather elusive and frowned upon in general.

Over the course of a few hundred years, these spiced meat and fruit pies started gaining in popularity again and appeared regularly in the cookery books of the time. When they became solely fruit filled, no one quite knows. It might have been sometime in the 19th century, as Mrs Beeton has a recipe for mincemeat that’s made just with dried fruit, almost exactly like the many mincemeat recipes found today. See image below.

Mince Pies Recipe

There are 2 – 3 parts to the recipe, but this completely depends on whether you’re making the mincemeat and pastry from scratch. This is how we’ll be making our mince pies from scratch:

1. Make the mincemeat 1 – 2 weeks in advance, to allow the flavour to mature. I make mine with our Christmas pudding on Stir Up Sunday. Just like for our Christmas pudding, get the family to stir the ingredients and make a wish.
2. On the day you want to bake the mince pies, make the pastry and chill it for 30 minutes.
3. Cut out circular pastry shapes and place in a mince pie tin, or muffin tin.
4. Fill with mincemeat.
5. Cut our festive shapes and top the mince pies.
6. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes, depends on your oven.
7. Cool, take them out of the tin and dust with icing sugar.

What do you think? Doable?

The Ingredients

Mince Pies Filling

Let’s take a look at what’s inside mince pies, shall we? Mince pie filling is called mincemeat, but it doesn’t contain any meat, as explained above. I published the recipe for it a couple of years ago, and am finally getting around to the actual mince pies!

Mincemeat Recipe (Traditional, Vegetarian and Alcohol Free)

Traditional mincemeat recipe for your homemade mince pies, to be made at least 2 weeks before. Plus vegetarian and alcohol free versions.

Get the Recipe!

I give you an option of making it with or without alcohol. Non alcoholic mincemeat doesn’t want to be made early. 3 days is the earliest. You’ll need:

• Mixed Fruit – this can be a combination of raisins, sultanas, currants, prunes, candied peel and/or dried cranberries. I tend to use raisins and sultanas with candied citrus peel.
• Suet – this is the fat of choice for our mince pies and Christmas puddings because of its higher melting point. Traditional suet is the saturated fat found around kidneys and other organs and is solid at room temperature. I switched to vegetarian suet 20+ years ago because I prefer the cleaner taste and because of the vegetarians in the family.
• Liquid – I use brandy for this, and sometimes a mixture of brandy and sweet sherry. For non alcoholic mincemeat, I use light Earl Grey or Darjeeling tea, for the perfect fruity and floral aroma.
• Brown sugar – this gives the best flavour for your filling.
• Additional ingredients – we have a tart apple and some almonds. In the past, I’ve also used pecans and walnuts, but love almonds best.

Mince Pies Pastry

The pastry for mince pies is easy enough, you just need:

• all purpose flour (aka plain flour)
• icing sugar (powdered sugar) – just a little for a hint of sweetness in the pastry but not quite pâte sucrée or sweet shortcrust pastry.
• salted butter (call me a rule breaker), if you prefer using unsalted butter, add a pinch of salt
• a little cold water

Gluten Free Mince Pies

You should be able to make gluten free mince pies pretty easily, with 2 changes:

1. Use a gluten free flour to make your pastry, or buy a gluten free pastry.
2. You’ll need gluten free suet or a suet substitute, like this vegan and gluten free suet.

So with the above in mind, just use vegan butter or vegetable fat to make your pastry, and you’ll have vegan mince pies. Or use shop bought vegan pastry.

How to Store

Once baked and cooled, store your mince pies in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Mince pies can also be frozen. Finish making them, without baking and without brushing with milk or egg. Then cover the whole tray with cling film and freeze for up to 3 months. Bake straight from frozen, with milk or egg wash on the pastry tops, for about 22 – 25 minutes until a light golden brown.