The smell of baking pastry and mincemeat heralds the arrival of Christmas. As a child my first mince pie of Christmas was always December 1st, since there was a family birthday that day. Our tradition was a mince pie each everyday in December thereafter. My mum would bake them in large batches at least twice a week, so our home was often filled with that rich aroma. Perhaps our family tradition was a variation on the original tradition of a mince pie for each of the twelve days of Christmas. We certainly ate more mince pies our way.
Mince pies are a popular festive food here in Britain. They are small individual pies, made up from the pastry of your choice (this one with ground almonds sounds especially luxurious). My mum used shortcrust pastry, though one year she made shortbread for the pie tops which was tasty. The pies are filled with mincemeat, and if you’re a whizz in the kitchen you can always make your own mincemeat. Once upon a time, mincemeat did actually include minced meat, of apparently whatever meat happened to be at hand, mixed with the dried fruits and spices, and goes right back to medieval times. Today’s mincemeat contains no minced meat, and though most mincemeats do retain suet, it isn’t uncommon for those who make their own mincemeat to leave that out as well, leaving just the thick syrupy mix of dried fruits, citrus peel and spices. Mincemeat sometimes contains alcohol, but most don’t. In a recipe it can be replaced with orange juice. More usually mincemeat can be bought from the supermarket in the same way as jams and marmalades. One Christmas in Tokyo, a friend and I got together to make mince pies, Robertson’s mincemeat having been available in one of the stores that sold imported foodstuffs to homesick expats. I make lousy pastry, for which I blame my hot hands, so I these days I cheat all round, and buy both ready-to-roll shortcrust pastry and mincemeat.
The proportion of pastry to mincemeat changes the eating experience. Under normal circumstances, be it pies, sandwiches, curry, pasta or pizza I prefer more filling or topping and less of the carbohydrate. But with mincemeat I find a little goes a long way. The pies I was raised with had a thick pastry and just a teaspoon of mincemeat, and that’s how I like them. The shallow patty tins my mum has, for the best result, are difficult to find today. I do my best with the popular bun tin, but it really is too deep.
Cromwell and the puritans disapproved of the gluttony (he’d have been disgusted by our mince pie-a-day tradition) and other festivities associated with the celebration of Christmas, and there has long been a myth that the eating of mince pies at Christmas is even now illegal, all down to Cromwell, though apparently that one is no longer on the statute books, if it ever was. Still, there have been modern day scares as well, with an MP accused of trying to ban mince pies. Mince pies are offered to guests, visitors and carol singers during the Christmas season, and it is traditional to leave a mince pie for Father Christmas.
In my own family we eat fewer mince pies, and have adjusted the tradition. We have mince pies as refreshments after every family home evening in December. We also eat them on Christmas Eve and of course Christmas Day.
What festive food traditions do you enjoy?
Wheat & Tares 
I love this post! (Though I reserve my opinion of mincemeat.)
We always make loaves of pulla and sometimes batches of Wassail to take to our neighbors. I’ve expanded it into an entire Christmas basket.
Hedgehog,
Really enjoyed this, really and lots. I find rituals and traditions surrounding food some of the best reading material to be found. However, you were not truthful. This statement: “But with mincemeat I find a little goes a long way,” LIES! Heresies! There can never be too much mincemeat. I wait all year so I can eat it out of the jar with a spoon. I have always enjoyed candied citrus rinds and fruitcake as well.
My favorite holiday treat is stollen, more exactly marzipan stollen from Leipzig, even though Dresden’s stollen is more famous (or in a pinch from anywhere in eastern Germany.) Of course, the stollen always tastes better if you make a night of buying it and spend the evening at a Weihnachtsmarkt with drinking chocolate, sautéed mushrooms, and roasted chestnuts. And, if you are going to buy a cake or two for the holidays, you might as well buy a slice or three for the evening.
I’m sure this will touch the heart of hedgehog.
My wife makes the Christmas pudding for the family. When my M-I-L was still with us and her uncle was also around, we did the ceremony worth the brandy soaking and lighting it on fire. We even had holly on top. We then ate it with the whipped cream on top.
We also do the Christmas crackers.
I don’t usually make it myself because I don’t want to weigh 300 pounds, but my favorite Christmas treat is English Toffee, just like my mom used to make. One food tradition I do uphold is to always stock up on lots of in-the-shell nuts. The kids love cracking them open and eating them throughout the holidays.
we have really tried to lay off the Christmas food traditions, because most of my family is overweight. But we do order Chinese food every Christmas Eve. Makes for a delicious meal without any work on my part, and I’m not causing any poor Christian family to miss holiday celebrations with their family.
Jenny,
One of my friends runs a Chinese restaurant and he is Mormon (but his family is technically buddhist.) 😉
Thanks for the comments all. Glad you liked it.
SilverRain, I had to go and look those up, feeling very ignorant. The pulla sounds lovely (sweet cardamon bread – Finnish, is what I found anyway). Given all the old carols we sing about wassailing, it’s strange I’d never heard of the drink (or perhaps that’s just down to being raised in a non-alcohol environment). However,I don’t think we’d call it that here any more. Just festive punch, or spiced wine. In the interval of the school Christmas concert they serve what smells to be a heady warm punch, the yeasty fumes filling the cathedral during the first half.
Forgetting, Mincemeat by the spoonful, oh my!
I used to make a really rich fruit Christmas cake towards the end of October to mature for Christmas. But not any more. Too many different dietary requirements to cater for now. It was something my mum always did too, along with the Christmas pudding, and we’d all take a turn stirring the mixture and making a wish. Our Christmas cakes have a layer of marzipan beneath the icing.
I’ve had stollen a few times, but have to confess to preferring the Italian panettone, as it is so airy and light, but still with the fruit, and especially a citrussy flavour.
The chocolate, mushrooms and chestnuts sound good.
“if you are going to buy a cake or two for the holidays, you might as well buy a slice or three for the evening.”
Absolutely.
Wow Jeff, a real flaming Christmas pudding. Not something I’ve seen in real life. My mum always made Christmas pudding, but we didn’t do the bit with the brandy, not least because naked flames and small children don’t mix too well, I imagine, alcohol issues aside. Members here tend to be on the very conservative side on the issue of alcohol in food. I had one Bishop (not a chemist) who insisted that cooking with alcohol concentrated it.
Christmas crackers are good. What are the contents? Here a paper crown and a lame joke are obligatory, along with a small gift of some sort.
hawkgrrrl. Ah yes, that hard stuff you have to take a hammer to. I’m not a fan of toffee, but I love fudge. We also have lots of nuts in shells. We had to replace out nutcracker this year.
jenny, ah yes. Christmas isn’t good for the waist line. My parents would take us to the nearby country park on boxing day to walk it all off. This is something that has grown in popularity in the city where they live, and now a person can expect to run into all sorts of people they know doing the same thing.
We make a couple of different kinds of cookies, traditionally. Now that my mother and my grandmother are gone, we find ourselves drifting away from some Christmas kitchen traditions, more’s the pity.
Hedge,
We did the brandy because my wife’s family is Irish/English and everything revolved around alcohol. When we do it here, we just eat it! I started by bringing back Marks and Spencer Christmas pudding on my business trips, but then my wife just decided to make them. she ever goes and get the suet from the butcher and everything. she just finished about 6 of them this week to give to friends.
It’s definitely an acquired taste.
I’m not a fan of food traditions unless they have 3 or less ingredients and doesn’t take all day to make and clean up after in the kitchen. Our memories of Christmas food traditions growing up is my mom making 6 types of treats to put on christmas plates to deliver while caroling — to get those complete she would yell at and harass all 6 of us kids to help her. No one wanted to do it; maybe that’s why when I think of these things I just think about stressed out moms yelling at their kids.
Husband begs for frosted christmas cookies like his mom used to make; but will they stick around and help from start to finish? Nope. Cross that tradition off the list. I’m more like, let’s have flavored popcorn be our tradition! I think we can have easy food traditions without killing ourselves, much to my mother in law’s chagrin. The less time I spend in the kitchen the better.
You have my sympathies Kristine. It’s all a lot more fun when it’s a way to entertain children, and they are participating and everyone is enjoying doing so. That was something I only managed during the October half term holiday (when we used to do the cake). I don’t generally work too well with others in the kitchen, so am not particularly good at passing on those traditions to my kids in December.
I think I spend more time in the kitchen at Christmas than any other time of year.
Still, I should probably have mentioned that the supermarkets are stacked high with boxes ready-made mince pies this time of year too. I find them too syrupy though, not enough fruit, but too much filling to pastry nonetheless.
Flavoured popcorn is interesting. I’m not a huge fan of popcorn, so I prefer to do interesting things with it. I like using olive oil, and adding ground black pepper afterwards. You can also use a smidgeon of lemon oil with that one. My daughter likes experimenting with popcorn, and has made a version dusted with Christmas spices.
Marzipan sweets are also pretty quick. Just two ingredients. Marzipan and cooking chocolate. I like those.
NI, I think that’s true of all kinds of cooking, not just Christmas. There seems to be less time spent in the kitchen all round. Life just seems to be busy. I guess, if we feel it to be that important we make time, but otherwise not.
Jeff, she must be a purist on the pudding thing if she gets her suet from the butcher, or is it just that it isn’t available in a US supermarket? It used a lot here for all kinds of suet puddings, and savoury dumplings, or used to be, I think they aren’t eaten as frequently as they were in the past. Christmas pudding does have a strong distinctive flavour.
I grew up on the Mexican border and so I have memories of tamales at Christmastime. I can eat those things by the dozen! The only caveat is they have to be good tamales. A mediocre tamale is simply not worth the effort of unpeeling the corn husk.
Oh, Mincemeat is my favorite! My grandmother had homemade mincemeat every year, but she made regular full-sized pies, not the little “tarts” you describe. And hers had real meat in it. Beef, to be exact, and good quality cuts, finely shredded. I think the recipe had about 100 ingredients…
Tamales sound fun Lonicera, what fillings do you like?
Neal, that sounds just amazing.
The best tamale fillings were venison, which my father provided from hunting. I also like beef.
I grew up in England but now reside in the beautiful country of Australia. I make at lest 8 dozen mince pies every Christmas. My children and grandchildren don’t think it is Christmas until they have had their mince pies. Thanks hedgehog.