A meat pie that lost its meat — mincemeat evolved from a genuine beef-and-fruit mixture into a purely sweet filling, but nobody updated the name.
A mixture of dried fruits, spices, sugar, and sometimes suet, used as a filling for pies, or finely chopped meat.
Compound of mince (from Old French mincier, to cut small, from Vulgar Latin *minutiare) and meat (from Old English mete, meaning food) Key roots: minutus (Latin: "small, made small").
Mincemeat originally contained actual meat — beef or mutton mixed with dried fruits and spices. The meat gradually disappeared from the recipe over centuries, but the name stuck. Today's mincemeat pies are vegetarian in all but name, a fossilized reminder of medieval cuisine where sweet and savory