Mincemeat
INGREDIENTS. -2 lbs. of raisins, 3 lbs. of currants, 1½ lb. of lean beef, 3 lbs. of beef suet, 2 lbs. of moist sugar, 2 oz. of citron, 2 oz. of candied lemon-peel, 2 oz. of candied orange-peel, 1 large nutmeg, 2 lbs. of apples, the rind of 2 lemons, the juice of 1, pint of brandy.
Stone and cut the raisins once or twice MINT SAUCE. across, but do not chop them; wash, dry and pick the currants free from stalks and grit and mince the beef and suet, taking care that the latter is chopped very fine; slice the citron and candied peel, grate the nutmeg and pare, core and mince the apples; mince the lemon-peel, strain the juice and when all the ingredients are thus prepared, mix them well together, adding the brandy when the other things are well blended; press the whole into a jar, carefully exclude the air and the mincemeat will be ready for use in a fortnight. If an additional quantity of spice be preferred, add 1/2 teaspoonful of pounded mace and the same of pounded allspice.
We, however, prefer the mincemeat without the latter ingredients and can vouch for its excellence.
SEASONABLE. - Make this about the beginning of December.
This is the older, meat-bearing form of mincemeat, and the problem with it is not the flavour but the method of keeping. The notes below explain the terms in the ingredient list and why the preservation cannot be relied on today.
- Raw beef, never heatedThe lean beef is minced raw and goes into the jar raw. Nothing in the process brings it to a temperature that would destroy Salmonella, E. coli O157 or Listeria; the mixture is simply sealed and left. Anything eaten from the jar without further cooking carries that risk forward.
- Two weeks at ambient temperature"Carefully exclude the air" and "ready for use in a fortnight" describes an anaerobic, low-acid, meat-containing jar held at room temperature. There is no measured salt, no nitrite, no acidification and no heat process, and nothing that reliably rules out the growth of Clostridium botulinum.
- Preservation by guessworkThe keeping power here is meant to come from sugar, suet and spirit binding up the available water. But nothing in the recipe measures that: no weight of salt, no pH, no water-activity target, no processing temperature. A modern heated kitchen cupboard is not a cold larder. A current, tested recipe should be used instead.
- The brandy quantity is missingThe list reads "pint of brandy" with a fraction apparently dropped in printing; the figure usually given for this mixture is half a pint. As printed, the alcohol content is unknown, which matters when alcohol is one of the only things standing in for a preservative.
- "Moist sugar"Unrefined or partly refined cane sugar, damp and slightly sticky. The nearest modern equivalent is light brown or light muscovado sugar, not granulated white.
- Currants and citronCurrants are dried Zante grapes, not fresh blackcurrants or redcurrants. Citron is the candied peel of Citrus medica, thick and pale; it is still sold at Christmas but is often replaced with extra candied lemon peel.
- SuetBeef suet here means the hard kidney fat, chopped by hand. Packet shredded suet is the modern stand-in and is usually flour-dusted, which changes the texture of the finished mixture.
- ScaleThe quantities total roughly thirteen and a half pounds before the brandy — a large household batch, which the recipe directs to be pressed into a jar and sealed.
Mincemeat began as a way of keeping meat, and this recipe is a late survival of that: beef, suet, dried fruit, sugar and spirit, packed down and sealed. Medieval and early modern "mince pyes" were substantially meat pies sweetened and spiced, and the drift from savoury to sweet ran slowly across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with the beef shrinking in proportion until it disappeared. Mrs Beeton's book, first published in 1861 and reissued and expanded for decades afterwards, catches the mixture mid-transition, several times as many pounds of fruit, sugar and fat against a single pound of beef, and by the twentieth century most commercial and domestic mincemeat kept only the suet. The instruction to make it at the beginning of December reflects a fixed household calendar: the mixture needed a fortnight to mellow before the pies were wanted, and a cold larder made that possible in a way a heated modern house does not. The aside preferring it without mace and allspice, and vouching for its excellence, is characteristic of the book's voice, which mixes flat instruction with the occasional personal verdict.