Summary
By 1413, the treat was so embedded in English culture that Henry V (of "once more into the breach" fame) refused to be crowned king unless there were stacks of Christmas pies prepared for the post-coronation bash. His great-grandson, Henry VIII (of "off with her head, too" fame) decided real meat would be better in the pies than suet. (Little known fact: The first attempts to make the pies using real meat resulted in entire rump roasts, racks of rib and boars' heads being haphazardly slathered with a crust and baked to varying degrees of doneness. After wrestling with a slice of pie that contained a full sirloin of stag, taken that same day from the royal forest, Henry suggested the meat be cut into smaller, bite-sized pieces. Hence, "minced meat.")
Thenceforth, all should have been well in the world of mincemeat pies, and would have been, were it not for Oliver Cromwell. As you remember, he was the Bill O'Reilly of his time in that he could not resist telling others how they should be observing the holidays. He and his infamous Puritan Council (equivalent to the present James Dobson's Focus on the Family) regarded Christmas as nothing more than an excuse for gluttony, drunkenness and debauchery. In 1657, Cromwell outlawed the celebration entirely, along with everything that went with it - including the "Christmas Pie." (Cromwell regarded all pies as "guylty, forbydne pleashoores." It is widely accepted that the movie American Pie was modeled on him as a teenager.)With the same fortitude they displayed some 300 years later during the Blitz, the common English people would not be cowed. They began to make their dear pies in odd and eccentric shapes - "Secret Pies," they called them - to fool the jackbooted Cromwellians into believing they weren't pies at all, but instead were crusty bookends, or perhaps doilies. There is one reported incident where the center was cut out of a Bible so that a taboo pie might be smuggled inside, "over the vallye and througheth the woode to grande-marm's hawse," undetected.See the full content of this document
Extract
Mmm, Mmm, Pie!
Welcome back to this examination of the glorious, gorgeous mincemeat pie. In Part I, we explored my personal relationship with this culinary treasure from the Isle of Albion and how I have planned to fulfill my columnary obligations for the remainder of 2008 with the complete story of everything there is to know about this...
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