rs Winterson never gave up her War Cupboard. From 1939 to 1945, she had done her bit for victory by pickling eggs and onions, bottling fruit, drying or salting beans and trading black-market tins of bully beef. She liked things you could store, and while waiting for either nuclear war in the 1950s and 1960s, or the Apocalypse Anytime Soon, she carried on pressing beef and making things with dried fruit.

The two essential items in our lean-to kitchen both came with ­handles: the mangle, for wringing out the clothes on wash-day, and the Spong mincer. This was the largest Spong mincer money could buy and it lived clamped on the edge of our Formica table. One of its many uses was making mincemeat for mince pies. Mrs Winterson made her mincemeat in the autumn because we had plenty of windfall apples.

It is confusing for those whose Christmas tradition does not include mince pies to work out why the mince is not meat, but fruit.

The answer is that mince pies go back to the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and in those days the miniature mince pies were indeed made with minced meat, fruit and candied peel.

Why?

Fruit and spices were used to disguise the inevitably ‘off’ flavour of meat without refrigeration. This is probably why fruit was so popular in English cooking right up until the late 1960s. We are not America and fridges were expensive back then. We didn’t get one until I went to secondary school in the 1970s. My dad won it in a raffle. It was a tiny under-the-counter fridge and mostly left empty. We had no idea what to do with it. The milkman delivered every day, veg came off the allotment or from the market twice a week, we had our own hens for eggs, and because we were poor we bought a joint of meat once a week – no more. The remains went through the Spong, to reappear in pies and meat pastes. If our food wasn’t being eaten it was being cooked, and if it wasn’t being cooked it was fresh. Who needed a fridge?

But if you want to make your own no-meat mincemeat, with or without a Spong – here’s the recipe. Yes, you can use an electric ­blender, but a mechanical device with a handle delivers a more ­satisfying coarseness. If you don’t want to make your own, buy some good stuff (read the ingredients – not too much sugar, no bloody palm oil et ­cetera), then, before you use it, tip the contents of your jars into a bowl, add more brandy and stir. Commercial mincemeat is always too dry.

FOR THE MINCEMEAT YOU NEED

1 lb (450 g) cooking apples, cored and peeled – and then grated

1 lb (450 g) nicely chopped suet (yes, suet . . . go figure)

1 lb (450 g) each of sultanas, currants, raisins and demerara sugar. You can add candied peel if you like it. I hate it.

6 oz (170 g) almonds, blanched and pounded up with a pestle and mortar

Grated rind and juice of 2 lemons (unwaxed, organic; you are eating this stuff after all)

Teaspoon grated nutmeg

Teaspoon cinnamon

Teaspoon salt

Quarter pint of brandy – or rum if you prefer

Stuff the dried fruit through the Spong. Chuck the fruit and everything else into a big bowl. Blend it all together. Add more brandy or rum if you don’t like the consistency. Not too runny but not slab-like either. Pack into jars and put in the back of a cool cupboard for at least a month.

I do mine on Bonfire Night – November 5th. You could easily choose Halloween as an equally messy celebratory night of pointlessness, so why not do something useful while you’re trick or treating or making bonfires and getting drunk?

Then you’re ready to roll (the pastry) come December.

FOR THE MINCE PIES YOU NEED

Your mincemeat – home-made or shop-bought

1 lb (450 g) plain flour – I use organic; Mrs W used Homepride.

Teaspoon baking powder

½ lb (225 g) unsalted butter – I use organic. She used lard.

Tablespoon of sieved sugar or castor sugar

Plain cold water (have this at the ready or you’ll cover the tap in pastry mix)

An egg thoroughly beaten up in a cup for later

You’ll also need a baking tray with individual shallow pie slots; grease these with the butter from the wrapper – or the lard from the wrapper if you want to be back in the 1960s.

METHOD

Wear an apron. This recipe is messy. Mrs W called her apron a pinny – short for pinafore – because our 1960s were also the 1860s.

Put on some Christmas carols, Bing Crosby, Judy Garland or Handel’s ‘Messiah’ (it was written for Easter but soon became the mince-pie Christmas staple).

Chuck everything except the water and the egg into a big bowl and knead it with both hands. When Mrs W was teaching me this when I was about seven she gave me the bowl and told me to knead the mixture, but I couldn’t work out how to get both knees into the bowl.

When your mixture looks like breadcrumbs put in enough cold water to turn the stuff into dough.

Now sprinkle some flour on the counter or rolling board, turn out the mixture, roll it with your rolling pin – good for your triceps – bang it around a bit and think of your enemies, if you are like Mrs Winterson, until you like the texture; you should be able to throw it at someone (your enemy) and do damage. Put this Christmas missile back in the bowl, cover it with a robin tea towel (optional robin) and stick it in the fridge for an hour, or just put it on the windowsill if the weather is cold or snowy or seasonal. But not raining.

Mrs W never had to do this part because we had no central heating, just a coal fire, and our house was always freezing. Modern homes are too warm for good pastry. They used to say cold hands make good pastry. If you want the full 1960s experience, lard ­et cetera, turn off your heating the night before and wear two jumpers under your pinny.

Get out the mincemeat – your own or shop-bought. Turn into a bowl and see if you want to add any more brandy or rum. Is the mixture too dry? This matters.

Now – and this is my bit not hers – pour yourself a glass of wine and go and write some Christmas cards or wrap a few gifts; something seasonal and fun. Don’t do the ironing.

Heat up the oven to 200°C or gas mark 6. You will know your own oven so do it some time during the hour the pastry is firming up. I have an Aga so I am useless at oven-work – and Mrs W had a gas oven of terrifying heat. It behaved like a castrated blast furnace roaring for its balls. Squat. Square. Short legs. Cast iron. Turn on the gas tap. Hiss. Throw in the match. Stand back. Boom. Roar. Rip of blue flame steadying to a line of unleashed orange. Inside of oven like a squash court of self-bouncing fire. Now cook.

Hopefully you have a tamer domesticated version of this feral fire-box.

So back to the fridge.

After an hour or so, get out your pastry, cut the lump in half and roll out one half onto your floured counter. Not too thick. Use a cup or a cutter to make pleasing circles of pastry and press these firmly into your greased baking trays.

Now fill each one generously, but not idiotically, with the mincemeat.

Now you have a choice.

Traditionally you roll out the other half of the pastry and make lids for the pies, sealing the joint with a bit of beaten egg and brushing egg over the top of the lid. Spear a hole in the lid with a skewer to let the steam out.

OR – make more pies and just drape an ‘X’ of pastry in two strips over the mincemeat for those who want less pastry. Not me.

These will cook faster, so don’t burn them.

Bake for 20 minutes with lids, 15 minutes without lids. In an Aga this is not exact. In Mrs Winterson’s furnace it was 20 minutes or eat them black.

Store in an old tin you have no use for but can’t bear to throw out.

TIP: make twice the amount of pastry. It will keep in tinfoil in the fridge for five days. And then you can make some more mince pies quick and easy.