Fact 65: Why are mince pies called mince pies?
Fact 65: Why are mince pies called mince pies?
The reason is because they originally were made with the mince meat being mutton (sheep), beef, rabbit, pork and game birds (turkeys, chickens, quail, pheasant etc) as mince because Mincemeat was originally the easiest ways to preserving meat.
Mince pies date back to Middle Ages however they have changed alot. In 1413 King Henry V (5th) was served mince pie made with a bird mince, spices with boiled eggs and spices, which were rare, expensive and extravagant ingredients for April 9 1413 (his coronation). Putting mince meat in mince pies was either faded out or just stopped sometime in the late victorian era. Today the mince pies is filled with a mixture of dried fruit such as currants, raisins and figs, this is mixed with fresh thinly chopped brambley apple and orange zest and lemon juice and spices, the spices are cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg with sugar this is called Mincemeat and used to fill mince pies. Mince pies recipe
The word beef comes from the french word boeuf because of the French Norman's would called it boeuf when it was cooked basically we (the British) would prepare the cow and cook the cow then we (the British) showed the cooked cow to the French Norman's, the French Norman's would call cow by the french word boeuf so we (British) thought boeuf is what we should call cooked cow because that was what the french called it when was cooked because the french only saw the cooked cow when we served the cooked cow in front of them not the live cow because otherwise we would have probably changed the word cow completely to boeuf but we didn't. Boeuf obviously later morphed to the word beef meaning cooked cow. A similar thing happened to pig french Norman's called it porc because they only saw it when it was cooked so British people started doing the same later porc morphed into the word pork meaning cooked pig. Sheep french Norman's called it mouton because they only saw the it when it was cooked British people started calling it mouton this later morphed into mutton meaning cooked sheep.
