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Patent or Mock Mince Pie
4 eggs 4 cups water 1 cup sugar 1 cup molasses 1 cup Five Roses flour 1 cup vinegar 1 cup raisins 1 teaspoon cloves 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon soda ½ 1/2 dozen crackers (very fine)
The book gives quantities and nothing else, which was normal for a contributed recipe in 1913 — the assumption was that you already knew what a mince pie looked like. A few things need spelling out before this will work.
- No method is givenThis is a filling, not a finished pie. The mixture has to be cooked in a saucepan over moderate heat, stirring, until it thickens to the consistency of jam before it goes between two crusts; poured in raw it will flood the pastry and never set.
- Four cups of water is not a misprintFour cups of water looks startling but is probably not a misprint: the water, sugar and molasses reduce during cooking, and the crackers and flour swell into it. It will likely make enough filling for two or more 9-inch double-crust pies, so scale down or keep the surplus refrigerated.
- Crackers"½ dozen crackers (very fine)" means six plain soda or water crackers crushed to crumbs. Period crackers were larger than modern saltines, so the volume is uncertain: six saltines give only about 1/4 cup of fine crumbs. They are the body of the filling, standing in for the suet and meat of true mincemeat. Saltines will do; sweet crackers will not.
- Flour and crackers togetherA cup of flour in a wet filling will go pasty if dumped in. Slake it with a little of the cold water to a smooth slurry first, then stir it into the hot mixture.
- Soda and vinegarThe teaspoon of soda is there to blunt a full cup of vinegar and to react with the molasses, not to leaven anything. Add it last and expect the mixture to foam up; take the pan off the heat when you do.
- MolassesUse ordinary cooking or fancy molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter enough at this quantity to dominate the spices.
- EggsFour eggs will scramble if they meet the boiling syrup directly. Temper them with a ladle of the hot mixture, then return it all to the pan and cook gently — the eggs must reach a set custard, so this filling should not be left underdone.
- BakingThe book gives no oven instruction. By modern practice a double-crust pie of already-cooked filling wants a hot oven to set the pastry: around 425F for about 15 minutes, then 350F for 25 to 30 minutes until the top is browned and the vents are bubbling. Cut steam vents.
Mock mince pie belongs to a large family of "mock" dishes — mock turtle, mock duck, mock oyster — in which cheap pantry goods imitate something expensive. Real mincemeat meant beef or tongue, suet, brandy and weeks of ripening in a crock; the mock versions substituted crackers or soda biscuit for the meat and suet, vinegar and spice for the wine and the aged tang, and could be made in an afternoon from things already in the house. Some cracker-based versions were called cracker pie. What "patent" is doing in the title is not clear; it may be no more than a contributor borrowing the confident language of manufactured goods, and there is no evidence of an actual patent behind it. The Five Roses Cook Book was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company and drew on recipes sent in by Canadian women who used its flour, which may account for the telegraphic style: the list is printed as its contributor wrote it, method and all assumed.