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Mincemeat (Lbs meat cooked lb suet lbs)
2 lbs. meat, cooked 1/2 lb. suet 4½ lbs. brown sugar 1 lb. raisins 8 pts. apples, chopped 1 lb. currants 1 T salt 1 T cinnamon 1 pt. molasses 1 T allspice 1½ pts. vinegar 1 T nutmeg 2 pts, water Boil all together one-half hour.
A meat mincemeat of the old school, written in the two-column shorthand common to church cookbooks: the ingredients run down two lists and the only instruction is the last line. It makes a large batch meant to be put by for winter pies.
- The meatBoiled or braised beef is the usual choice for this kind of mincemeat: typically neck, shin or chuck simmered until tender, then chopped fine or run through the coarse plate of a grinder. The word "cooked" suggests the 2 lb is the cooked weight, so start with rather more than that raw -- allow around 3 lb.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, sold by butchers on request and sometimes frozen at holiday time. Chill it hard and grate or chop it; it should be in shreds, not lumps, so it melts through the mixture.
- The sugar quantityThe printed page gives 4½ lbs. brown sugar, as our text now reads. That suits the volume of fruit against 2 lbs. of meat.
- T means tablespoonA capital T is conventionally a tablespoon and a lowercase t a teaspoon, though this page offers nothing to confirm the contrast. A tablespoon each of cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg is plausible for a batch this size, and a tablespoon of salt reads high to modern palates.
- Apples by volumeEight pints of chopped apples is a gallon, roughly 4 lb prepared, or about a dozen medium tart apples such as Granny Smith or Northern Spy. Chop them to raisin size so they hold their shape through the half hour of boiling.
- The boilHalf an hour at a bare simmer, stirred often. This mixture is dense with sugar and fruit and will catch on the bottom of a thin pan; use a heavy pot and a flat-edged spoon.
- Yield and storageThis makes a very large batch; the listed ingredients alone come to well over a gallon before cooking, so expect several pies' worth and more. The original assumes crocks in a cold cellar; refrigerate what you will use within a week or two and freeze the rest in pie-sized portions rather than attempting to can it without a tested process.
- Using itMincemeat is generally held to improve over a few days as the spices marry. The recipe gives no baking directions; by modern practice, fill an unbaked shell, cover with a top crust, and bake hot (about 425F) for 15 minutes, then at 350F until the crust colors.
Mincemeat began as a genuine meat dish: medieval and early modern English cooks packed chopped beef or mutton with dried fruit, spice and suet, the sugar and acid doing preservative work as much as flavoring. Later American mincemeats often still carried meat, though the proportion had fallen steeply against the apples and raisins, and commercially bottled versions were on grocers' shelves by the late nineteenth century.