Originally Posted by Qwertyy (Post 1908942)

wait wait wait wait

hold the **** up

are you telling me i've been living a lie???

i swear i thought my grandmother had actual minced meat in these pies and that's why i never tried them.

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic (Post 1908947)

Well, joking aside, in England at least, a pie of minced meat (usually lamb or beef I think) would be called Shepherd's Pie, or Cottage Pie, and the topping would be mashed potato, or occasionally pastry. With those two traditional names, we avoid terms like "minced meat pie" which would be easily confused with a "mince pie" which is much smaller, always with pastry, and is all about fruit and sugar.

How these two very different foods are described and distinguished in North America I don't know. Perhaps you need to sit down and have a long serious chat with your Grandma ;)

Originally Posted by Man like Monkey (Post 1908943)

The mince pies that me and Lisna are talking about are small.

You said your gran made one, so I assume it was a large pie and probably had beef in it. I've never heard of a large mince pie that you slice. They are cupcake sized.

To be honest its a really confusing thing to have a pie called a mince pie, where the filling is actually called mincemeat yet there is no meat in it.

Originally Posted by Frownland (Post 1908950)

And the pies aren't minty, either. Don't be fooled Qwert.

Originally Posted by Lisnaholic (Post 1908938)

^ Let's not get confused, ok? In the same way that sweetbread has no bread in it and is made of meat, mincemeat has no meat in it and is made of fruit. If you do decide to mince some meat you end up with mince or minced meat, but never mincemeat, which is the principal ingredient of a mince pie. A mince pie, as everybody knows, has no mince in it or meat either; it just has mincemeat. That's why a mince pie could be considered a sweetmeat, but obviously sweetbread is never called a sweetmeat because it's made of meat. What could be simpler?!

And, yes, an individual mince pie served with cream is delicious; my mum used to spend a morning making them for us every Christmas.

Originally Posted by Trollheart (Post 1908963)

This post needs more usage of the word "mince".