Petits Pâtés de Pézenas

These little pastries, which contain mutton sweetened with sugar, resemble mince pies and date back to medieval times when sugar, like salt, was added to meat as a seasoning. Traditionally the pâtés are served as a dessert and are fashioned like fat-stemmed mushrooms with the filling inside the stem, as in this recipe. However, this shape is tiresome to make and more and more of these pâtés are simply rounds of dough sandwiched with the filling.