Mince pies are a well-established staple of the festive season, packed with mincemeat, fruit and spices, all encased in a tasty pastry crust. The tradition of eating a mince pie every day for 12 days from December 25 to the Twelfth Night dates back to the Middle Ages and was believed to bring good fortune and happiness for the year ahead. Nowadays, mince pies start appearing on supermarket shelves from October onwards.
However, if you're keen to make your own mince pies this Christmas, there's an unexpected ingredient that can make your pies beautifully flaky and flavourful. Most recipes suggest making the pastry crust with plain flour, butter, water and a pinch of salt, but adding 3oz, or 85g, of lard to the same amount of butter will give your mince pies a wonderfully flaky texture. Lard is often added to pie crusts due to its high melting point, which helps produce a very flaky crust, reports the Express .
The dough's ability to remain solid for longer during handling and baking results in more distinct layers of fat, creating a delightful flakiness when the fat melts during cooking. In contrast, butter melts much quicker, potentially leading to a tougher pastry crust. The culinary website, The Chopping Block, explains: "Lard used to be extremely common in pie crust making, but then it became a sort of vilified ingredient.
Now the all-butter crust is so ubiquitous a lot of people seem to have forgotten lard was ever in the mix." "An all butter crust can be very good, and i.
