Minced meat and fruity pies

Mince pies, like so many of the foods we reserve only for Christmas, can be divisive. Mince pie haters, when pressed, tend to claim the sweetness of the filling puts them off, or that it is shop-bought pies they object to, with their oddly pale, flaccid pastry, and overly liquid interior. Others dislike all dried fruit, and regard mince pies in the same light as plum pudding or fruit cake. For those not brought up with mince pies, the term itself risks confusion. Notoriously, in 2019, the American food website The Spruce Eats published a recipe for a ‘classic British Christmas treat’: a mincemeat and apple tart whose developers had used minced beef as the base. The howls of laughter could be heard across the Atlantic, and the recipe was amended. However, as several commenters pointed out at the time, it wasn’t that outré: the original mincemeats were, indeed, based on minced meat.