Mince-Meat (Two bowls chopped apples one)

A typical 1870s mincemeat: mostly apple, a little meat, and enough sugar, spice and cider to keep it. The original assumes you already know that the meat goes in cooked and that the whole mixture is simmered down before it ever sees pastry.

• The meat is cooked first"Chopped meat" here means lean beef — traditionally boiled neck, shin or tongue — cooked until tender, cooled, and then chopped fine. Raw beef stirred into fruit and left to stand is not what is intended; simmer or boil the meat separately, and reserve a little of its broth to moisten the mixture.
• Simmer the mixture, then bakeThe recipe gives no method, but most mincemeats of this kind were cooked down before use: combine everything and simmer gently, stirring, until the apples break down and the cider and molasses reduce to a thick, glossy mass — roughly 1 to 2 hours. Cool completely before filling a pastry shell. Without the simmer you risk a watery pie and undercooked apple.
• "Two bowls" is genuinely vagueThe book nowhere defines a "bowl." Read it as proportion rather than volume: two parts chopped apple to one part chopped cooked beef, and scale to the quantity of fruit you have. As written, with a quart of cider and a pound and a half of dried fruit, the batch is a large one — several pies' worth.
• SuetA quarter pound of beef suet, chopped or grated fine, is the fat. Real suet is a butcher's order now; frozen shredded suet works, and unsalted butter is a common substitute, though it does not carry the same clean firmness through long keeping.
• Molasses and ciderTwo teacups is about 1 1/2 cups; a teacup ran 6 fl oz or less. "Cider" in a 19th-century American book means fresh or hard apple cider, not vinegar and not concentrate — either sweet cider or a dry hard cider suits.
• Whole nutmegOne nutmeg grated is roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons, considerably more than a modern pie would carry. Start with half and taste as the mixture cooks.
• CitronCandied citron peel, sold at Christmas or from baking suppliers. Candied orange or mixed peel is a fair replacement; ordinary candied lemon peel is milder.
• KeepingNineteenth-century cooks packed mincemeat in stone jars in a cold cellar and trusted the sugar, cider and spice. Without measured acidity or a tested canning process, treat it as a refrigerator preparation — a week or two cold, or freeze it in pie-sized portions.
• Baking the pieA double-crust 9-inch mincemeat pie with a fully cooked filling wants 400F until the crust is browned and the vents are bubbling, about 40 minutes. Vent the top well; the filling steams hard.