Sweet Mutton Pie
Image: https://www.simplybeefandlamb.co.uk

My grandmother was extremely poor - she was raising five children as a single charwoman - so meat was rare and when it happened was usually breast of mutton or some other almost free cut. She used to roast breast of mutton in the side oven of the banked down cottager range cutting it down so it would fit in layers in one of those battered oval enamel roasters with a lid that were pretty well ubiquitous when I was a girl in the fifties. For the initial roasting she would rub it with salt and pepper and chopped thyme. When she came in from work the bones were pulled out of the now disintegrating meat and she would find different ways of bulking it up, depending on finances at the time. Her sweet mutton pie was one of my favourites. For that she simply added chopped apples, cinnamon, ginger and raisins. She used a short crust pastry and made it up as turnovers. Proportion of pastry to filling depended on finances and how far it had to stretch I think. It would be served with boiled or baked potatoes. Sometimes, but not always, vegetables such as onions and carrots were added. Again I suspect the volume of additions reflected the finances - and of course the season. But the fruit and cinnamon were a constant.

When she was feeling flush she would buy two breasts of mutton and roast as above, but after pulling out the bones she weighted them for a while to get some of the fat out and then put a stuffing of breadcrumbs, herbs, onions and egg between the two layers and egg and breadcrumbed the outside before returning it all to the oven to bake and then serving it sliced."

"I have a recipe for sweet pie from a friend who is in her eighties and it was eaten every Christmas throughout her father's life. He lived to be a hundred. It is basically fat lamb diced with dry fruit and sugar added and baked under a pasty crust. It is the original recipe for mince pies and she made it in a large bowl. Her father said it keeps till Easter. She turned to using fat beef. I have used minced breast of shearling lamb and the result is a chewy version of our normal mince pie."