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Mincemeat Royal
To an ounce of clarified butter add the yolks of four eggs, and beat in two table-spoonfuls of pounded sugar, with the grated rind and strained juice of a large lemon. Mix these ingredients with half a pound of rich mincemeat, without beef, and nearly fill the patty-pans with the mixture. Put them into a moderately quick oven to set. Ice them with the whites of the eggs, previously beaten to snow, with a quarter of a pound of pounded loaf sugar, and place them in the oven again until they are of a nice rich brown.
A Victorian mincemeat tartlet enriched into something closer to a lemon curd, then finished with meringue. The instructions assume you already know how a patty-pan is lined, so a few things need filling in.
- Pastry is assumedPastry is probably assumed — the recipe says only to fill the patty-pans, and comparable mince-pie recipes of the period line the tins with shortcrust first, though this one never says so. If you line them, use a plain short pastry and chill the cases before filling, or the wet mixture will soak the base.
- Patty-pansShallow individual tartlet tins, roughly 2 to 2.5 inches across, the same size as a mince-pie tin. A 12-hole bun or mince-pie tray is the direct equivalent.
- Pounded sugar and loaf sugarBoth mean sugar crushed fine from a cone or lump. Caster (superfine) sugar is the modern stand-in for each; it dissolves properly in the egg yolks and whips into the meringue without grittiness.
- Mincemeat without beefNineteenth-century mincemeat often contained chopped lean beef as well as suet. Almost all jarred mincemeat sold today is already meatless, so any standard jar satisfies the instruction — look for one with plenty of fruit rather than a thin, syrupy filling.
- A moderately quick ovenAbout 400F. Bake only until the filling has just set and no longer wobbles in the centre, roughly 15 to 20 minutes for tartlets this size.
- The meringueFour whites to 4 oz sugar is a soft meringue. Beat the whites to firm peaks first, then add the sugar a spoonful at a time and keep beating until glossy — sugar added too early gives a slack topping that weeps over the pastry.
- BrowningReturn them to a cooler oven, around 325F, for 8 to 10 minutes rather than the original baking heat; the meringue colours long before it dries otherwise. A few seconds under a broiler works but scorches quickly.
- YieldHalf a pound of mincemeat with the yolk mixture fills about twelve small tartlets. They are best the day they are made — the meringue softens overnight.
Mincemeat began as a genuinely meat-based preserve: spiced, sweetened chopped beef or mutton with suet, dried fruit and brandy, a way of keeping meat through the winter that survived long after refrigeration made it unnecessary. By the later nineteenth century the beef was increasingly optional, and the instruction here to use mincemeat "without beef" reflects that shift — the fruit and suet had become the point. What the "Royal" of the title refers to is not recorded. The same trick of covering a set custard or tart with beaten whites appears across Victorian cookery in queen of puddings, lemon meringue tarts and open jam tarts. The recipe's economy is characteristic of the period: four yolks go into the filling and the four whites into the topping, with nothing left over.