Traditions - Mince Pie Club. (2024)

FAQs

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

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

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.

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.

However, the mince pie was originally a savoury pie – and not even round! In the Tudor period they were rectangular, shaped like a manger and often had a pastry baby Jesus on the lid. They were made from 13 ingredients to represent Jesus and his disciples and were all symbolic to the Christmas story.

During medieval times it was common to mix sweet and savoury ingredients. Honey and dried fruits were pricey and hard to come by so using them in your meals was a sign of wealth. This made spiced pies a special treat reserved for important occasions like Easter or Christmas.

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.

20th century. By the mid-twentieth century, most mincemeat recipes did not include meat, but might include animal fat in the form of suet or butter, or alternatively solid vegetable fats, making it vegan.

Mincemeat isn't difficult to make, but it has a lot of ingredients, which can make it expensive to produce in small batches, and it requires at least a day's advance planning to let the ingredients sit.

A mince pie (also mincemeat pie in North America, and fruit mince pie in Australia and New Zealand) is a sweet pie of English origin filled with mincemeat, being a mixture of fruit, spices and suet. The pies are traditionally served during the Christmas season in much of the English-speaking world.

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.

Are mince pies religious? ›

The original mince pies were oblong crib shapes decorated with a baby Jesus on top. The contents represent the gifts of the Magi to the Christ child, spices and plump middle eastern fruits.

Mince pies = eyes

This is a term used widely in London even to this day, usually to describe a girl's features. Her eyes would be described as Minces, an even more slang term from the original mince pies.

of Christmas it brings good luck for the year ahead. According to tradition, you must also make a wish.

The general rule for a holiday family meal, which takes into account larger portions than a normal meal, budgets for each person, on average, to eat one three-inch wedge of a nine-inch pie (there are six of these slices in the pie). Simplified, a family should have one full pie for every six guests at the table.

How Many Slices Are in a Medium (12-Inch) Pizza? Medium pizzas run 12 inches in diameter and will give you about eight slices.