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Mincemeat for One Pie
Christina D. Kern. 1 C cold chopped beef 1½ C chopped apples 3 T melted butter ¼ C molasses ½ C vinegar 1/2 C sugar ½ t cinnamon ½ t cloves ½ C seeded raisins ½ t salt Mix thoroughly. Boil for ten minutes. When cool bake between two crusts.
Mrs. Lenoard Disney.
A small-batch mincemeat, sized for a single pie and made with cooked leftover beef rather than a crock of cured meat put down in the fall. The transcription carries some typesetting damage that needs sorting out before you shop.
- The half measuresThe printed page gives ½ teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon cloves, ½ cup seeded raisins and ½ teaspoon salt, and that is what our text now reads. These are modest amounts for a single pie, in keeping with the 1½ cups of apples; a dozen teaspoons of cloves would be inedible.
- Cold chopped beefThis means leftover cooked beef — boiled brisket, pot roast, the end of a rib roast — chopped fine, not raw ground beef. The ten-minute boil is meant to marry the mixture, not to cook meat from raw, so start with meat that is already fully cooked.
- Chopped, not groundMincemeat was chopped to a coarse hash, by hand or in a food chopper, not reduced to a paste. A food processor will turn beef and apples to paste in seconds; pulse briefly or chop by hand for the texture the recipe assumes.
- No suetOlder mincemeat commonly uses beef suet for richness; the only fat here is three tablespoons of melted butter, so this will be a leaner, brighter filling than a traditional English mince. It is also not a keeping preserve — it contains cooked meat and no spirits, so treat it as a filling to use within a couple of days, refrigerated.
- The applesUse a firm tart apple that holds its shape — Granny Smith, Northern Spy, Braeburn. Ten minutes of boiling will collapse a soft variety into sauce.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A double-crust fruit pie of this kind goes into a hot oven, about 425°F, for 15 minutes to set the bottom crust, then 375°F for another 30 to 35 minutes until the top is browned and the filling bubbles at the vents.
- YieldAs titled, enough for one 8- or 9-inch double-crust pie, serving six to eight. The mixture is roughly four cups before baking.
- Let it cool properly"When cool" matters — warm filling melts the fat in an unbaked bottom crust and produces a sodden pie. Cool the mixture to room temperature or chill it before filling.
Mincemeat began as a way of preserving meat with sugar, dried fruit, vinegar and spice, and by the nineteenth century American cookbooks were filling it out with apples until the meat became a minor partner rather than the point. A recipe like this one shows the next stage: scaled down from the autumn crock to a single pie, using up cold roast beef on a weekday rather than putting anything by. What it is, in effect, is a sweet-sour spiced preserve of meat and fruit, closer kin to chutney than to pumpkin pie. Note also the double attribution, the recipe headed by one contributor and signed by another.