Mince, glorious mince

Sometimes, when it comes to culinary history, Britain is its own worst enemy. For a long time, British food has been seen as a joke among other nations, but also nearer to home. Even when the dishes are near indistinguishable, we’re still happy to poke fun at our own fare: we love panna cotta but laugh at blancmange; we cringe at stew but revere boeuf Bourguignon. They’re the same, but that doesn’t stop us.

Where better to showcase the unsung hero braised beef mince than in a beautiful short-crust pie?

Mince gets the worst of our inward-turned opprobrium, a leitmotif in our national food anthem. A pot of stewed mince speaks to all that is wrong with British food: staid, bland, brown, probably overcooked and definitely stuck in the 1950s. Even in the age of slow food and whole-food movements, the world scoffs at Britain’s slow-cooked, whole-food favourite.

In 2017, British readers lost their minds when American food website Eater listed ‘mince on toast’ as a quintessentially British dish. The United Kingdom leapt to its own defence, refuting the allegation and denying vociferously that such a ridiculous and embarrassing dish had any place in our national consciousness. ‘As if!’ we cried as one, ‘as if such a revolting thing could possibly speak for us, or of us, as a nation!’ I believe the word ‘monstrosity’ was used.

Of course, the joke was on us. We were wrong, for the most part. Mince on toast has a long British history, with recipes dating back to the early 19th century. And since then, classic British restaurants such as St John and the Quality Chop House have (rightly) delighted in putting mince on dripping toast on their menus. But even this has done little to rehabilitate the reputation of British mince.