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Mince Meat
2 lbs. fresh lean beef, boiled and chopped fine when cold 1 lb. suet, chopped very fine 5 lbs. chopped apples 1 lb. seeded raisins 2 lbs. currants 3/4 lb. sliced citron 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 1 grated nutmeg 2 tablespoons ground mace 1 tablespoon ground cloves 1 tablespoon allspice 1 tablespoon fine salt 2½ lbs. brown sugar 1 qt. sherry or 1 qt. boiled cider 1 pt. brandy Mix thoroughly all ingredients. Pack in jars. Store in cold, dry place. Let stand 24 hours before using.
This is a full 14-to-15-pound crock of old-style meat mincemeat, and the storage instruction is the problem: a low-acid mixture of cooked beef and raw suet packed into jars and left at cellar temperature with no processing, no measured acidity and no seal. The notes below explain the terms and why the keeping method no longer stands.
- Why the storage failsBoiled beef and chopped suet are low-acid foods, and once packed into closed jars they sit in the oxygen-poor conditions in which Clostridium botulinum spores can germinate; a cold cellar slows that but is not a guarantee against it, and nothing in the method brings the jars to a temperature that destroys the spores. No acid is measured in.
- The alcohol is not a preservative hereA quart of sherry and a pint of brandy sound like a lot until they are spread through five pounds of apples, two pounds of currants and three pounds of meat and suet. The finished mixture is well under the alcohol concentration that inhibits bacterial growth, and it is wet throughout.
- Sugar does not rescue it eitherTwo and a half pounds of brown sugar across roughly fifteen pounds of mixture does not lower water activity anywhere near the level that makes a preserve shelf-stable. Jam works at something closer to equal weights of sugar and fruit.
- What "cold, dry place" meantIt meant an unheated larder or cellar, considerably colder for much of the year than a heated modern house. A modern pantry cupboard is not a substitute, and the recipe gives no temperature at all.
- Meatless mincemeat is a different propositionMuch of the mincemeat sold and made today contains no beef, which is one reason it behaves differently in the jar. If you want to put up mincemeat, use a current tested recipe with specified acidity and a specified processing time rather than adapting this one.
- Boiled ciderNot fresh cider: sweet apple cider reduced by long simmering to roughly a seventh of its volume, thick and dark. It was a New England pantry staple and is still made commercially; it is the non-alcoholic alternative the recipe offers to the sherry.
- CitronCandied peel of Citrus medica, sold sliced or diced in the baking aisle around the winter holidays. It is not the same as the citron melon sometimes preserved in Southern recipes.
- SuetThe hard fat from around beef kidneys, asked for raw and chopped fine. Butchers will still supply it on request; the shredded packaged suet sold in Britain is often vegetable-based and behaves differently.
- Two tablespoons of maceThat quantity is unusual even by period standards and will dominate the spice profile. Read it as written rather than as a misprint for teaspoons, but be aware of what it does.
Mincemeat is the surviving descendant of the medieval and early modern meat pie sweetened with dried fruit and spice, a combination that made sense when sugar and cinnamon were themselves treated as seasonings for flesh rather than as dessert. Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the meat shrank and the fruit grew, until by the twentieth century the beef was optional and the suet was the last animal element left; recipes like this one, with two pounds of beef against five pounds of apples and three pounds of dried fruit, sit in the middle of that long retreat.