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Old Fashioned Mock Mince Pie
Mix together 1 cup of bread crumbs, 1/2 cup of vinegar, 1 cup seeded raisins, 1 cup of molasses, 1 cup of sugar. Ground cloves and cinnamon to taste, and water enough to make right consistency-probably a large cup full. Scald the ingredients and use when cold like ordinary mince meat.
— Mrs. Albert Tattersall
A meatless, apple-less mock mince filling that leans entirely on vinegar, molasses and spice to imitate the sour-sweet depth of real mincemeat. It is fast, but the balance is delicate and the original leaves both the pastry and the baking to you.
- The hinge is the vinegarHalf a cup of vinegar to one cup of sugar is aggressive by modern palates, and the vinegar in a household of this period was as likely to be cider as distilled. Cider vinegar suits it best; taste after scalding — if it grips the back of the throat, thin with a little more water and sugar before it goes into the crust.
- Bread crumbsSoft crumbs from stale white bread, not dried packaged crumbs, which are far denser and will drink the liquid and turn the filling to paste. Roughly two slices of bread torn and rubbed by hand gives a cup.
- MolassesLight or dark cooking molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will fight the vinegar rather than round it. Sulphured molasses was common in this period; unsulphured is the better-tasting modern equivalent.
- "Scald the ingredients"Bring the mixture just to a simmer in a saucepan and hold it a few minutes, stirring, until the sugar dissolves, the raisins plump and the crumbs swell. It is not a long cook; the point is to hydrate and marry, not to reduce.
- Right consistencyAim for the thickness of thick jam — a spoon dragged through leaves a track that slowly closes. It firms noticeably as it cools, so stop while it still looks slightly loose. The "large cup full" of water is a starting point, not a rule.
- Cooling mattersThe instruction to use it cold is practical: warm filling melts the fat in the bottom crust and produces a soggy base. Cool completely, and it will keep covered in the refrigerator several days.
- BakingFill a double-crust 9-inch pie, vent the top, and bake at 425F for 15 minutes, then reduce to 350F for 25 to 30 minutes until the crust is browned and the filling bubbles at the vents.
- YieldSomething on the order of four to five cups of filling — enough for two 9-inch pies, or one deep pie with filling to spare.
Mock mince pie belongs to a long American tradition of imitation dishes born of thrift: mock turtle soup, mock oyster, mock apple pie made with soda crackers. True mincemeat was built on suet, chopped beef or beef tongue, apples, cider and brandy, put up in crocks in the autumn; a cook without meat to spare, or without apples in late winter, reached instead for what was always on the shelf — stale bread, molasses, raisins, vinegar and the spice box. The vinegar is doing the work of the missing cider and fruit acid, the molasses the work of the missing brown sugar and spirits. Church and society cook books like the Philathea, compiled from members' own contributions and printed to raise funds, are full of such substitutions, and they preserve the names of the women who submitted them alongside the recipe, as here with Mrs. Albert Tattersall. The word mince refers only to the fineness of the chop, which is why a filling with no meat in it at all could still honestly be called mince.