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Excellent Lemon Mincemeat
1/2 cupful Crisco 2 large lemons 4 apples 1/4 lb. chopped candied lemon peel 1 lb. currants 1 3/4 cupfuls sugar 1 teaspoonful powdered cinnamon 1 teaspoonful powdered ginger 1/2 teaspoonful grated nutmeg 1/2 teaspoonful powdered allspice 1/4 teaspoonful powdered cloves 1 teaspoonful salt 1/2 cupful seeded raisins 1/2 cupful chopped nut meats Extract juice from lemons and remove pips. Now put lemons into saucepan, cover with cold water, and boil until lemon feels quite tender. Change water at least twice, drain and pound peel to a paste, add apples, cored, peeled and chopped, lemon peel, Crisco, currants, raisins, salt, spices, lemon juice, nut meats, and sugar. Put into a jar and cover. This mincemeat is excellent for pies and tartlets.
Sufficient for four pies.
A meatless mincemeat built on whole boiled lemons rather than suet and beef. It is uncooked once mixed, so the boiling of the lemons and the sugar ratio are doing all the work.
- Boil the lemons properlyThe hinge of the recipe is softening the lemon shells until a fork goes through the pith with no resistance, changing the water at least twice. Rushed or unchanged water leaves the pith bitter and the whole jar tastes acrid.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, standing in for the suet of a traditional mincemeat. Modern shortening is a close stand-in, though it has since been reformulated; an equal measure of chilled butter or beef suet gives more flavour but will firm up solid in the refrigerator.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, the small black raisins, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. A pound is roughly 3 cups.
- Seeded raisinsRaisins with the seeds removed, once a laborious kitchen job. Ordinary seedless raisins are the direct replacement.
- Cupfuls and poundsThe cup is most likely the standard 8 fl oz measure. On that basis, 1 3/4 cupfuls sugar is about 12 oz; 1/4 lb candied peel is about 3/4 cup chopped.
- ApplesFour apples is imprecise; aim for about 1 1/4 lb before peeling and coring. A firm tart variety holds its texture in the jar better than a soft eating apple.
- StorageNothing here is sterilised or sealed, and unlike an old suet-and-brandy mincemeat there is no alcohol to preserve it. Refrigerate the jar and use within a week or two, or freeze it; do not leave it in a larder to mature.
- Yield and bakingYield -- The recipe states it is sufficient for four pies. It gives no baking instructions or oven temperature.
Meatless mincemeats like this one belong to a long drift in the dish's history: what began in medieval England as spiced minced meat preserved with dried fruit gradually shed the meat, then the suet, until only the fruit, sugar and spice remained. The use of branded Crisco points to one of Procter & Gamble's promotional cookbooks of the Crisco era, when the company was pushing its new hydrogenated shortening as a clean, all-purpose substitute for lard and suet, and commissioned writers demonstrated it across a wide range of dishes. The lemon base rather than an apple-and-suet base makes it a lighter, sharper filling, closer to a marmalade-mincemeat hybrid. Currants, candied peel and the spice combination of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice and clove were the standard winter baking pantry of the period, cheap and shelf-stable in a way fresh citrus was not.