Mince Pies

The story

Mince pies owe their name to something they no longer contain: real, finely chopped meat. The recipe, tradition has it, was brought to England by returning Crusaders taken with the Middle Eastern combination of meat, fruit and spices, and by the 14th century cookbooks such as "The Forme of Cury" include lavish meat pies filled with pork, poultry, eggs, cheese and exotic spices, a luxury with which wealthy families displayed their status during the twelve days of Christmas. In the 17th century, in Oliver Cromwell's day, the Puritan Parliament abolished the celebration of Christmas itself, and Puritans attacked mince pies as a symbol of unruly revelry, though the story that the pies themselves were outlawed is a legend; Christmas officially came back only with the return of King Charles II. By the Victorian era the meat had largely disappeared from the recipe, turning the pies into the sweet treat of dried fruit and spices we know today, while their size shrank from a lavish main course to a bite that fits in one hand. Few sweets have traveled the road from a pie preachers railed against to something children leave on the mantel "for Santa."