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Mincemeat, Old-Fashioned
Take a pound of beef, a pound of apples, two pounds of suet, two pounds of sugar, two pounds of currants, one pound of candied lemon or orange-peel, a quarter of a pound of citron, and an ounce of fine spices; mix all these together, with half an ounce of salt, and the rinds of six lemons shredded finely. See that the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated, and add brandy or wine according to taste.
A full Victorian mincemeat: about ten pounds of it, built on beef and suet as well as fruit. The proportions are sound, but several of the ingredients and assumptions need translating.
- The beef should be cookedMany period recipes call for lean beef already boiled or roasted, cooled and finely shredded or minced, though others use raw lean beef; cooked meat is the safe choice now rather than raw meat left to mature in a crock. Weigh it after cooking.
- Keep it coldThe sugar, suet and spirit gave this keeping power in a cold larder, but a meat mincemeat should be refrigerated, and the jars used within a few weeks rather than the year a Victorian cook expected.
- SuetTwo pounds of beef suet, shredded. Packet shredded suet works directly; a block of fresh suet is easiest grated from frozen. Vegetable suet substitutes cleanly if the beef is left out.
- CurrantsZante currants — the small dried grape — not fresh redcurrants. Modern packets are pre-cleaned; older cooks had to pick over and rub off grit and stalks.
- An ounce of fine spicesAbout four level tablespoons of ground mixed spice; the recipe does not say which, but nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves and mace are the usual candidates. Grate the nutmeg fresh.
- Citron and candied peelCitron is the thick candied rind of a large citrus fruit, sold in slabs and now uncommon; candied orange or lemon peel in the same weight is the usual substitute. Chop it small, as the recipe assumes a fine, even mince throughout.
- ApplesA firm, sharp cooking apple such as Bramley, weighed peeled and cored. Chopping rather than grating keeps the mixture from going to pulp.
- The brandy"According to taste" in practice means enough to moisten the whole thoroughly — roughly a cup to a cup and a half for this quantity, added at the end and topped up if the mixture dries during storage.
- YieldAround nine and a half pounds of finished mincemeat once the spirit is in, enough for a great many small pies. Halving or quartering the recipe is entirely sensible for a modern household.
Mincemeat is the surviving relic of the medieval meat-and-fruit pie, in which spices, dried fruit and sugar were used with beef or mutton rather than after it — the "shred pie" or "Christmas pie" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Through the nineteenth century the meat steadily receded: many Victorian cookery books give two versions, one with beef and one without, and the meatless kind is what almost all commercial mincemeat became. The recipe is called "old-fashioned" presumably because it keeps the beef, and the ratio here — one pound of meat to two of suet and two of sugar, against something over four pounds of fruit and peel — shows how far the balance had already tilted toward confectionery. The heavy candied peel and citron mark it as a festive, expensive mixture; the brandy or wine at the end was both flavouring and, in a cold larder, part of what kept it.