Overview
- TikTok user Laura Parker said she avoided mince pies for years believing they tasted of beef, a clip that went viral and reignited questions about the pastry’s contents.
- Recent coverage explains that modern mince pies contain dried fruits, mixed peel, brandy, sugar, and warming spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Traditional recipes used beef suet, which still appears in some products, while many versions opt for butter or vegetable shortening.
- The earliest recorded relatives date to 1390’s A Forme of Cury with pork, eggs and cheese, and a 1615 recipe featuring a leg of mutton and substantial suet.
- The link to Christmas is documented in Samuel Pepys’s mid‑17th‑century diaries, the Cromwell ban tale is a myth, and sweeter fillings prevailed as sugar from West Indies plantations became cheaper, defining the Victorian form.