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Mincemeat, Without Beef
Weigh a pound of good beef suet after chopping it as finely as possible, also a pound of stoned raisins; cut them across, but do not chop. Well wash and dry half a pound of currants, and pare, core, and chop the same weight of russet apples--these are best for this purpose, as they are less watery. Add two pounds of powdered sugar, a quarter of a pound of mixed candied peel--lemon, citron, and orange (minced)--a little powdered clove, two ounces of orange-marmalade, and mix the whole well together, so that the ingredients may be well blended; then pour over it a quarter of a pint of brandy, and the same of sherry, but more brandy and less sherry will do. This mincemeat should be made a month before it is used. Tie it down with bladder, to exclude the air. Probable cost, 2s. 10d.
A straightforward Victorian mincemeat that leaves out the chopped beef but keeps the suet. Two things need attention before you start: what "powdered sugar" means here, and how to store it now that nobody has a bladder to hand.
- Powdered sugar is not confectioners' sugarIn a British book of this date, powdered sugar means granulated sugar ground fine — what would now be sold as caster sugar. American confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will make the mixture pasty.
- The liquid measuresA quarter of a pint in an imperial pint of 20 fl oz is 5 fl oz, so roughly two-thirds of a US cup of brandy and the same of sherry. Two ounces of marmalade is about two rounded tablespoons.
- SuetButcher's beef suet must be stripped of membrane and chopped or grated very fine; it is far easier to grate when half-frozen. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetarian, substitutes weight for weight.
- Russet applesThe point of the russet is dryness and firm flesh, as the recipe says. Any dense, low-juice dessert apple works — Golden Russet, Cox, Braeburn. Avoid Bramley or other cooking apples, which collapse into liquid and thin the mixture.
- Do not chop the raisinsThe recipe wants them cut across, not minced; presumably to keep the fruit in recognisable pieces rather than reducing the whole mass to paste. Modern seedless raisins can be left whole if you prefer texture.
- Tie it down with bladderPack into clean jars instead, press down hard to eliminate air pockets, and seal. Because the suet is raw and never cooked, keep the jars in the refrigerator rather than a modern warm cupboard; the month of maturing was designed for a cold Victorian larder.
- Why a monthThe recipe is firm that the mincemeat be made a month ahead. Maturing time of this kind is generally held to let the sugar draw juice from the apples and dried fruit and the spirit distribute through the mixture; a shorter rest is likely to give a rougher result.
- YieldThe ingredients come to roughly 6 lb of finished mincemeat — five or six 1 lb jars.
Mincemeat began as exactly what its name says: minced meat, spiced and sweetened and packed with dried fruit and suet as a way of preserving it. Through the eighteenth century a mincemeat with beef, tongue or mutton in it was the ordinary kind, and versions leaving the meat out were unusual enough to be worth labelling as such — which may be why this entry carries the qualifier "without beef". By the time Cassell's was compiled the balance was tipping, and the meatless version was on its way to becoming the standard British Christmas filling it is today, with suet the last surviving trace of the original butchery. The generous two pounds of sugar and the half-pint of brandy and sherry are doing preservative work as much as flavouring work, in a household where the jars would sit in a cold larder.