christmas mince pies - why is it called mince meat??

Answer 1

Mincemeat was originally a mixture of bits of meat, dried fruit and spices -like sausage filling- prepared this way as an alternative to smoking or drying for preserving the food. So it actually had minced meat on it once.

Though meat has gone out of the ingredient list, the most traditional recipes still call for beef suet.

Answer 2

Y'ALL! THERE IS NO MEAT IN MINCEMEAT PIES.
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"Mince pie in Britain, is a miniature round pie, filled with mincemeat: typically a mixture of dried fruits, chopped nuts and apples, suet, spices, and lemon juice, vinegar, or brandy. Although the filling is called mincemeat, it rarely contains meat nowadays. In North America the pie may be larger, to serve several people. The large size is an innovation, for the original forms were almost always small. The earliest type was a small medieval pastry called a chewette, which contained chopped meat of liver, or fish on fast days, mixed with chopped hard-boiled egg and ginger. This might be baked or fried. It became usual to enrich the filling with dried fruit and other sweet ingredients. Already by the 16th century minced or shred pies, as they were then known, had become a Christmas specialty, which they still are. The beef was sometimes partly or wholly replaced by suet from the mid-17th century onwards, and meat had effectively disappeared from mincemeat' on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th century."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 507)

The Christmas pie came about at the time when the Crusaders were returning from the Holy Land. They brought home a variety of oriental spices. It was important to add three spices (cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg) for the three gifts given to the Christ child by the Magi. In honor of the birth of the Savior, the mince pie was originally made in an oblong casings (coffin or cradle shaped), with a place for the Christ Child to be placed on top. The baby was removed by the children and the manger (pie) was eaten in celebration. These pies were not very large, and it was thought lucky to eat one mince pie on each of the twelve days of Christmas (ending with Epiphany, the 6th of January).

Answer 3

mince meat is now recognised as being short for minced meat - usually beef, sometimes lamb or even pork. The meat is minced into small pieces. Mince meat pies now have no meat at all, they are entirely sweet and made of dried fruit

Answer 4

Mince Meat pies are quite literally pies made out of meats that have been "minced" or chopped very fine, sometimes even ground. So, the meat....it is minced. They are usually made of beef....and sweet things like raisins or grapes, apples, etc.

Answer 5

Mince is the style in which you cut the meat.

Answer 6

Because there used to be actual meat in the pie.