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Meat for Pies
3 lemons, grated rind and strained juice 1 tablespoonful powdered cinnamon ½ lb. chopped citron peel 1 tablespoonful grated nutmeg ½ lb. chopped candied lemon peel orange peel 1 tablespoonful powdered ½ lb. chopped candied mace 1 tablespoonful ground cloves 1 tablespoonful powdered allspice ½ lbs. (3 cups) sugar 1½ lb. blanched chopped almonds 1 teaspoonful salt 1 lb. finely chopped suet 3 oranges, grated rind and 1/2 pint (I cup) best brandy strained juice 1 tablespoonful powdered ginger 1/2 pint (I cup) sherry wine 1/2 pint (1 cup) best brandy Put all these ingredients into a large earthenware jar, mix well, and stir up before using. Keep well
This is a mincemeat for pie filling, built on candied peel, spice, suet and spirits rather than on any fresh meat. It is a keeping mixture, not a dish to be cooked at once.
- The name is not a mistake"Meat for pies" in this tradition means the filling, and the only animal ingredient is the suet (in this tradition normally beef). Mincemeat recipes of the period commonly also carried chopped apple, raisins and currants; without them this reads as an all-peel, all-spice concentrate, so expect an intensely candied result and cut it with grated apple if you want a filling closer to modern taste.
- Quantities are internally inconsistentThe sugar figure was checked against the printed page and reads as our text now gives it. The ingredient list itself is still jumbled, with peels and spices running together, and brandy appears twice at half a pint, which may be a duplication. Scale from a single component you trust rather than adding everything exactly as listed.
- Liquid measuresHalf a pint is given as one cup, which is the American pint of 16 fl oz. If you are working from British measures, half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, so follow the cup figure.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold by butchers and worth asking for in advance. Grate it frozen, or use packaged shredded suet; unrendered suet is what gives mincemeat its texture, and butter is not a substitute in a mixture meant to keep.
- Citron peelCitron is a thick-rinded citrus candied whole and sold in blocks. It is stocked seasonally and often only around Christmas; candied grapefruit or extra candied orange peel will stand in, with a slightly softer flavour.
- Powdered maceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed and tastes lighter and more floral than the nut. Since this recipe already carries a tablespoon of grated nutmeg, do not simply double the nutmeg in its place.
- Blanching almondsPour boiling water over shelled almonds, stand two minutes, drain, and the skins slip off between finger and thumb. Chop them after they have dried, or they will paste rather than cut.
- StorageAn earthenware jar in a cold larder was the original plan. Because this contains raw suet, keep it refrigerated in clean sealed jars and give it a stir every week or two; the sugar and spirits do the preserving, and it improves over a month before baking.
- YieldAs written the mixture runs to several quarts, enough for a good many pies. Halve or quarter it unless you are making gifts.
Mincemeat is the survivor of a medieval and early modern habit of seasoning meat with dried fruit, sugar and spice, and the name stuck long after the beef itself dropped out and left only the suet behind. Receipt books have long carried two kinds: one with boiled lean beef or ox tongue, and one "without meat" made from apples, peel and spirits, of which this is an unusually rich, peel-heavy example. Its appeal is straightforward household economy: a large jar mixed in autumn stood ready through the winter baking season, and brandy and sherry at these proportions were understood as preservatives as much as flavourings. The catalogue of citron, candied lemon and orange peel, mace, cloves and allspice also shows what an ordinary well-stocked kitchen could buy by then, ingredients that a century earlier would have marked a household as prosperous.