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Mock Mince-Pie
Twelve crackers rolled fine, one cup hot water, half cup vinegar, one cup molasses, one of sugar, one of currants, one of raisins, spice to taste; measure with a tea-cup. Some use one cup dried breadcrumbs, and also add a small cup butter. This is for four pies.- Mrs. Annie E. Gillespie, Indianapolis, Ind.
A cracker-crumb filling standing in for the suet-and-beef mincemeat of the period. The whole thing hinges on giving the crumbs time to swell before the pies go together.
- Let it standMix the crumbs with the hot water, vinegar and molasses and leave it 20 to 30 minutes off the heat. Filled and baked immediately, the crackers stay gritty and the filling weeps into the bottom crust.
- The teacupBuckeye Cookery says to measure with a tea-cup. Nineteenth-century teacups were not standardized and are variously reckoned at rather less than a modern 8-ounce cup, often around 6 fluid ounces. Using a standard 8-ounce cup throughout will give a looser, sweeter filling; something like three-quarters of a cup per "cup" is probably closer to the original proportions.
- Which crackersPlain soda crackers, unsalted or lightly salted — not sweet crackers and not graham. Twelve of them roll out to about 1 to 1 1/4 cups of fine crumbs, which is the figure to work to if your crackers are a different size.
- Spice to tasteThe recipe leaves it open; mock mince fillings of this kind commonly lean on cinnamon, cloves, allspice and nutmeg. For this quantity, about 2 teaspoons cinnamon and a teaspoon each of the others, adjusted after the mixture has stood and the flavors have come together.
- The vinegarCider vinegar, not white. It is doing the work that apples and cider did in true mincemeat, supplying the sharpness that keeps a cup of molasses and a cup of sugar from reading as flat sweetness. Do not reduce it much.
- ButterThe "small cup" of butter appears in the original alongside the breadcrumb variation, and is worth taking; "small cup" is imprecise, but something in the region of 6 tablespoons, stirred in while the mixture is still warm, works. Without it the filling is lean and rather sticky.
- Four pies is optimisticThe filling comes to roughly 5 cups, which spreads thin across four 9-inch double-crust pies. Two generous pies, or three modest ones, is a better division for a modern pie plate.
- BakingNo oven directions are given. Treat it as any filled double-crust pie: 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then 350F for 30 to 35 minutes until the vents bubble. Vent the top crust or the steam will lift it.
"Mock" dishes fill a whole vein of nineteenth-century American cookery — mock turtle, mock oysters, mock duck — and mock mince-pie is among the most practical of them. Real mincemeat wanted beef or beef suet, brandy, and a stock of apples and candied peel; this version reaches the same dark, spicy, sweet-sour effect with soda crackers, molasses, vinegar and dried fruit, all of which a household could keep on the shelf through late winter when the apple barrel was empty. It belongs to the same family as vinegar pie, which appears in Midwestern community cookbooks of the era for the same reason. Buckeye Cookery, published in Ohio in the 1870s — an 1876 edition is generally cited, with the 1877 edition the one widely reproduced — was assembled from contributions credited by name and town, and Mrs. Gillespie's Indianapolis recipe is typical of the book's method: no oven temperature, no baking time, and a measure — the tea-cup — that every reader was assumed to have standing in her own cupboard.