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Mock Mince Pie
1 cup raisins seeded and shredded. 2 Uneeda biscuits, rolled fine. 1 cup raisins seeded and 1½ cups sugar. 1 cup molasses. 1/4 cup lemon juice. 2 tablespoons brandy. shredded. 1/2 cup butter. 2 eggs well beaten.
PROCESS: Mix ingredients in the order given. Add spices to taste. Line a pie pan with Plain Paste, turn in mixture, wet edges and cover with top crust made of Rich Paste; press and flute edges. Bake thirty-five minutes in a moderate oven. 1½ cups flour. 1/3 cup Cottolene.
The ingredient list has been scrambled in printing: the last two items (1½ cups flour, ⅓ cup Cottolene) belong to the crust, not the filling, and "shredded" has drifted away from the lemon it describes. Read it as a filling plus a two-crust pastry and it makes sense.
- Uneeda biscuitsA National Biscuit Company soda cracker, sold in the sealed "In-er-seal" carton. Two crackers rolled fine give only a few tablespoons of fine cracker crumbs; plain unsalted saltines are the closest match and do the same job, which is to give the filling body in place of the chopped beef of a true mincemeat.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil shortening from the N. K. Fairbank Company, and the reason this book exists. It is long gone; use any solid vegetable shortening or lard in the same quantity. The ⅓ cup with 1½ cups flour is enough for one crust, so double it for a covered pie, or use the flakier proportion for the top as the recipe directs.
- Plain Paste and Rich PasteStandard pastry vocabulary of the period. Plain paste is shortening cut into flour with ice water; rich paste has more fat and sometimes an egg yolk. A modern all-butter or shortening double-crust recipe covers both.
- Moderate oven350F. Thirty-five minutes will set the filling and colour the top crust; cut steam vents, since this is a wet, sugary filling that will lift the lid otherwise.
- "Seeded and shredded""Seeded" -- Raisins then still carried seeds, so they were slit and picked over. Any modern seedless raisin needs nothing more than a rough chop.
- SweetnessA cup of molasses plus 1½ cups sugar is very heavy by current taste, and the ¼ cup lemon juice is what keeps it from cloying. Cutting the sugar to about ¾ cup gives a filling closer to what most cooks now expect without loosening the texture.
- SpicesThe recipe gives no amounts. For one pie, something like a teaspoon of cinnamon and a quarter teaspoon each of cloves and nutmeg is a reasonable starting point. Grate the nutmeg fresh; the pre-ground jar is the weakest link in this filling.
- YieldOne pie (the recipe does not give a pan size), six to eight slices. It cuts far more cleanly after several hours at room temperature than while warm.
Mock mince pie belongs to a long American line of "mock" dishes — mock turtle, mock apple, mock duck — that reproduce the flavour of an expensive or laborious original from pantry staples. Real mincemeat meant beef or suet, apples and dried fruit, put down in a crock weeks ahead; this version delivers the spice, molasses and raisin character in an afternoon, with soda crackers standing in for the meat's substance. That a branded product, the Uneeda Biscuit, appears by name is characteristic of the book: 52 Sunday Dinners was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and circulated by the makers of Cottolene, the cottonseed shortening that turns up in nearly every pastry in it.