Museum cooks up a history of festive treats for visitors

And visitors to York Castle Museum will be able to take a trip back through the centuries to learn about the history of the mince pie. Demonstrators will cook three different types of pies, including a beef recipe from 1584 and a suet-based treat from 1764.

A contemporary recipe will also be made from a recipe in Nigella Lawson’s book, How to be a Domestic Goddess, which was published 11 years ago.

The York Museums Trust’s media co-ordinator, Lee Clark, said: “The mince pie is synonymous with Christmas so we thought this festive season we would look into its history.

“Guides will make pies in our kitchen studio to traditional and contemporary recipes to see how the pie and our tastes have changed over the centuries.”

Mincemeat pie dates back to medieval times, and the favoured meat used in the 1700s was tongue, or sometimes tripe.

The distinction between mincemeat and mince was drawn in the Victorian period when meat disappeared from the recipes, leaving the fruit, nut, sugar, spice, and suet mixture used in contemporary recipes.

The events charting the history of the mince pie will run from mid-morning to 4pm from tomorrow to Friday next week.

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