For day 8 of our Advent Calendar, Librarian Helen Skilbeck shares her favourite heritage mince pie recipe with you all.

Ann Peckham was from Leeds and wrote a book entitled ‘The complete English cook or prudent housewife’. Our copy shown here is the fourth edition dating from 1770.

In her preface Peckham states – ‘the following collection of receipts in the art of cookery, the result of above forty years practice in the best families in and about Leeds, is not stuffed with a nauseous hodge-podge of French kick-shaws; and yet the real delicacies of the most sumptuous entertainments are by no means neglected’ and ‘such mistresses as think it a burden to be continually dangling after their maids in the kitchen, may be exempted in a great measure from that trouble, by putting these rules into the hands of their servants; for special care is taken to make everything easy and intelligible to the meanest understanding’. Peckham was proclaimed to be ‘one of the most noted cooks in the country of York’ so it seems only fitting that we show you her recipe for some traditional mince pies made using a ‘gang of calf’s feet’.

Please let us know if you attempt this recipe. Come back tomorrow for some more Advent Calendar fun.