Recipe

a sweet Meaty treat worthy of Queen Victoria Buckingham Palace, 19th century

Get some meat in your suet with a mince pie fit for Queen Victoria

The origins of the mince pie – once containing literal mince meat, often tripe or tongue – are distinctly Medieval, but during the mid-18th century this meat feast was given a sweet touch as plantations on Britain’s Caribbean colonies made sugar more affordable and more widely available.

Charles Elmé Francatelli, Queen Victoria’s chef from 1840 to 1842, recorded an indulgent royal recipe in which the roast beef was accompanied by raisins, currants, suet, candied citron, orange, lemon, spices and sugar, stewed pears, preserved ginger, grated orange and lemon rind and juice, one bottle of rum, one bottle of brandy, and two bottles of port. It would be another two decades before meat was seen as an optional ingredient with the legendary Mrs Beeton outlining a meat-free mince pie in her 1861 book Household Management.