Are you sure that is it? Meat[1] used to mean food in general. In Swedish, the cognate would be “mat”, and that still means meat, much like hund (hound) means dog, and djyr (deer) means animal. I rather thought that meat in mincemeat was from “minced [sweet]meat”. Or, just “minced food”.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/meat#English

Mincemeat is (was) a way to preserve meat using sour, salty, alcoholic preserves and sweet flavoring.

Um, no. It's a nice folk etymology, though.

Are you saying mince pies didn't traditionally contain meat? Recipes up to the late 19th century include meat, and even today I can find some that do, although very rare - usually beef suet is the only remaining animal ingredient.

No, I'm saying that "mincemeat" has nothing to do with meat preservation. Mince pies certainly exist (though in my neck of the woods, it's more likely to be a tourtierre).

Mince pies are definitely a thing in New Zealand (and Australia to some extent).

They come in all sorts of varieties - plain mince, mince and cheese (yum), steak and cheese, mince and potato, and then some exotic varieties like butter chicken pie.

They're typically cheap and made from bad quality ingredients, but you can get very good quality mince pies if you know where to go.

If you're a hungry teenager and you need a snack - nothing beats a mince pie.

Mince & cheese with a can of V. Lunch of tradies all over this part of the world.

I'm Australian, and no one I know (from here or from NZ) calls what you're talking about a "mince pie", they call it a "meat pie".

A mince pie is the sweet fruit tart that is essentially only stocked at Christmas time.

Meat pies are all over the place, and are popular enough that a former premier referred to them as Australia's national dish.

Minced meat pies are so ubiquitous in Australia that we usually just say "pie". "Mince" is nearly always assumed to be animal meat.

The fruity kind of pies that only appear at Christmas time are called "mince pies", but we should really find another name for them because it's a constant source of disappointment when you expect savoury goodness and are presented with a sugary lump.

Anything in America called a "mincemeat pie" is a million miles removed from this; it's going to be something syrupy and a little bit lumpy with cloves and dried fruits. Mince to us is "ground beef"; if you asked for a pound of mince at the supermarket, you'd be directed to the aisle with the Mentos.

It's more pertinent that meat used to mean any food, and has since been narrowed to what used to be called flesh.

It continues to optionally (and traditionally it would certainly have/been very much more common to) contain suet.

If it ever contained anything one could in good faith call 'meat' (by modern definition, at least), it's news to me. [Edit below]

(The brandy however is borderline essential! Certainly a mince pie ought to be served wirh brandy butter.)

That said.. I don't think it's relevant how the quirks came to be, as in, it's no less interesting if it's easily explained away as 'oh well that used to make sense', because it's still funny/ambiguous/confusing when you take a step back and take everything at face value.

[Edit: you are absolutely right: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincemeat - it was essentially preservation by naturally sourced citric acid and sugars. News to me indeed! I stand by above though.]