Mince pies are descended from Christmas pies, which contained a variety of meats as well as fruit and spices.

Christmas pies were very much bigger than the tiny mince pies we eat today. One pie is recorded as having among its ingredients; a hare, a pheasant, a capon, two rabbits, two pigeons, two partridges, the livers of all these animals, as well as eggs, pickled mushrooms and spices. Sometimes these pies could weigh as much as 220 lbs. with iron hands to hold them together while they were baking.

Jack Horner was steward to the Abbot of Glastonbury, and he had to take a pie to King Henry VII as a present from the Abbot. Under the crust were the title deeds of twelve manors sent to the Kind in the hope that he would not pull down Glastonbury Abbey. It is said that King Henry received only eleven deeds. What happened to the missing deed? That well known nursery rhyme lives on to remind us.

Christmas pies used to be oblong or square in shape. They came to be called �crib pies� because they were similar in shape to the manger. These were forbidden by Oliver Cromwell at the same time as he also forbade Christmas in the mid-seventeenth century, especially those that had a little pastry figure to represent the baby Jesus placed on top. Christmas was re-instated when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, by which time the pies had become round and the pastry "Jesus" had disappeared forever. These came to be known as mince pies and contained ingredients similar to the ones we use today.

As time went on, mince pies became smaller and smaller. Another name for them was �wayfarers� pies since they were given to visitors during the Christmas holiday. It was thought to be lucky to eat twelve mince pies in twelve different houses during the twelve days of Christmas to ensure a happy twelve months for the year ahead.