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New England Mince Meat
4 lbs. beef 8 lbs. apples 1 lb. suet 3 lbs. raisins 2 lbs. currants 1/2 lb. citron 1 lb. brown sugar 1 qt. molasses 1 pt. boiled cider 1 tsp. salt 1 tsp. Slade's pepper 1 tsp. Slade's mace 4 tsp. Slade's cinnamon 2 tsp. Slade's nutmeg 1 tsp. Slade's cloves I add left over jelly or other fruits as I find. In case you use other sweets, do not use as much molasses.
— Catherine Wagner
An ingredient list rather than a method, which was normal for mincemeat in a church cookbook: everyone in the congregation already knew what to do with it. Here is what the list assumes.
- The beef is cooked firstRecipes of this type normally call for the beef — a lean cut such as chuck or shin — to be simmered until tender, cooled and chopped fine, with the strained cooking broth used to moisten the mixture, and the whole simmered together before packing. The list gives no method, so this is the usual convention rather than Wagner's own instruction.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidney, sold by a butcher on request. It is chopped or grated cold, not rendered. Frozen grated suet works; shortening does not give the same texture, though it will do in a pinch.
- Slade's spicesD. & L. Slade Co. of Boston was a spice packer whose brand appears in New England community cookbooks. Any good ground spice is a direct substitute; buy the cinnamon, mace, nutmeg and cloves fresh, since the quantities here are large enough that stale ones will taste of dust.
- Boiled ciderSweet cider reduced to roughly a seventh of its volume, sold by New England mills as boiled cider or cider syrup. It is sharply tart and concentrated; apple cider straight from the jug is not a substitute, though reducing about seven cups of cider down to one will get you there.
- Currants and citronCurrants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh red currants. Citron is candied citron peel, sold in half-pound tubs at holiday time; candied orange or lemon peel is the usual stand-in.
- The sweetening is adjustableWagner's own note is the important one: if you add leftover jelly or preserved fruit, cut the molasses back. A quart of molasses plus a pound of brown sugar is already at the top of the range for twenty pounds of fruit and meat.
- YieldThis makes something over twenty pounds — enough for something like eight to twelve nine-inch double-crust pies, depending on how generously you fill them. Halving or quartering it is sensible unless you are baking for a crowd.
- StorageThis version contains no spirits, which is what preserved the old crock-in-the-cellar mincemeat, and cooked meat and fruit at room temperature is not safe. Refrigerate what you will use within a week and freeze the rest in pie-sized portions. If you want it shelf-stable, follow a current tested pressure-canning procedure for mincemeat with meat rather than improvising.
Mincemeat is often said to have begun as a way to make winter meat keep — dried fruit, sugar and fat slow spoilage — and by the nineteenth century the meat had become the minor partner in what was really a fruit filling. New England held onto the beef version longer than most places, and boiled cider is the regional marker here: cider mills across Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts reduced surplus sweet cider to syrup, and it turns up in mincemeat, pies and baked beans throughout the area's cookbooks. This recipe is also a snapshot of how community cookbooks worked. Philathea classes were generally young women's Sunday-school groups, and their fundraising books were typically assembled from members' own kitchens, with contributors naming brands they actually bought — Slade's being a Boston spice house whose products were a fixture in New England pantries. The absence of any method, and the closing note about using up leftover jelly, mark this as a working recipe passed between cooks who needed no instruction in the basics.