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Pies without Cider
Take four pounds of boiled lean beef; one-half pound suet; four ounces cinnamon; two ounces mace or nutmeg; one ounce cloves; four pounds raisins; one pint molasses; one quart brandy; sugar to make it very sweet. To the above add an equal weight, nearly twelve pounds, of tart apples, chopped fine. This will keep for months. Before baking, add a tablespoon of strong cider vinegar to each pie.
We prefer making the mince-meat with sound cider; or put in half the prescribed quantity of boiled cider, and just before bringing the pies to the table, cut around the top crust with a sharp knife, remove it, and pour equally over the filling, a tablespoonful of brandy, or a wineglassful of wine to each pie. IV. Rhubarb Pie.
PREPARE the stalks by peeling off the thin, reddish skin, and cutting in half or three-quarter inch pieces, which spread evenly in your crust-lined tins. Sift on a little flour, to which add a bit of butter and a teacup of sugar, if for a large pie. However, when it is desirable to economize sugar, or when a very sharp, sour taste is not relished, a pinch of soda may be used to advantage, with less sugar, as it goes far toward neutralizing the acid. If you live in a new country without fruit, raise a good patch of rhubarb, save all your surplus, prepare as for use, and dry in the sun, as stove heat turns it dark colored. Soak and stew for winter use, with sugar and soda as above for pies. It makes, also, a nice sauce for tea. All tart fruit pies may be made in the same manner as directed for rhubarb pies, simply varying the proportions of sugar according to the fruit, and omitting the flour. V. Some Every-Day Pies.
Two recipes run together here: a large batch of meat mincemeat and a rhubarb pie, with a general note that any tart fruit follows the rhubarb method. The mincemeat is the problem — the rest is sound.
- Why the mincemeat failsFour pounds of boiled beef and half a pound of suet are mixed with fruit and spirit and expected to "keep for months" at room temperature. The mixture is never cooked after assembly, never sealed under heat, and never held at a measured temperature; a quart of brandy spread through roughly twenty-four pounds of meat, fruit and apple is nowhere near enough alcohol to be relied on as a preservative, and the sugar is specified only as "sugar to make it very sweet." Cooked meat held in that range is a risk for Clostridium perfringens and other spoilage organisms. Use a current tested mincemeat recipe with stated processing times if you want a meat mincemeat.
- Rhubarb leavesThe recipe says to prepare the stalks, and only the stalks are meant. Rhubarb leaves and the leafy portion at the crown contain high levels of oxalic acid and are not food; trim them off and discard them, including from any stalks you dry.
- Peeling is now optionalNineteenth-century rhubarb was often coarse and stringy, hence "peeling off the thin, reddish skin." Modern garden and market rhubarb needs no peeling, and the skin is where most of the colour lives.
- Teacup and "a bit of butter"A teacup in this period is roughly three-quarters of a cup, so about 5 to 6 oz of sugar for a 9-inch pie; "a bit of butter" means a tablespoon or so, dotted over. The "little flour" sifted on is the thickener — two to three tablespoons for rhubarb, which throws a great deal of juice.
- The soda trickA pinch of baking soda does neutralise some of the acid and lets you cut the sugar, but it also softens the fruit toward mush and, if overdone, leaves a flat soapy taste. A quarter teaspoon for a large pie is the outer limit.
- Boiled cider and "sound cider""Sound" cider means fresh sweet cider that has not turned; boiled cider is sweet cider reduced by roughly seven to one to a dark syrup, still sold by New England producers. It is not the same thing as cider vinegar, a tablespoon of which the earlier line directs into each pie before baking.
- OvenNo temperature is given, and the rhubarb directions describe only a crust-lined tin without specifying a top crust. A fruit pie of this kind wants a hot start, 425F for 15 to 20 minutes, then 350F for another 35 to 45 until the juice bubbles thickly.
- YieldThe mincemeat as written makes something on the order of twenty-four pounds of filling — a dozen or more pies. It was written for a household that baked in quantity, not for a modern batch of one or two.
The section title is the point of the page: through the nineteenth century mincemeat was routinely moistened with cider, and hard cider was the default farm drink, and it is tempting to read the title as serving temperance-minded households and the cookbooks that wrote for them — here vinegar, sweet cider, or boiled cider stand in — though the writer cheerfully keeps a quart of brandy and offers to pour more under the lifted crust at the table, which cuts against that reading. Mincemeat with actual meat in it is the older form; the beef and suet are the reason for the spice, the raisins and the molasses. The rhubarb note points the other way, at the frontier household: rhubarb was long called simply the pie plant because it was the first tart thing up in spring, it grew from a root division in almost any soil, and the advice to dry the surplus in the sun rather than over the stove is aimed squarely at settlers "in a new country without fruit" who had no orchard yet.