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Cheapest Good Mince Meat
Suitable for charitable institutions, etc., and not easily distinguishable from the costlier mixtures. It will not intoxicate. 1 1/2 pounds of bread. 1 pound of boiled beef or ox heart. 2 pounds of brown sugar. 1 quart of good molasses. 1 pound of common dried apples. 1 1/2 pounds of suet. 1 pound of raisins. 1 pound of currants. 4 ounces of ground cinnamon and other spices mixed. 1 ounce of black pepper. 1 pint of vinegar. Peel of 2 or 3 oranges. 1 tablespoonful of salt.
Pour two quarts of cold water over the bread; steep and mash. Boil the apples in two quarts of water, then chop them and add the juice to the rest of the ingredients, all minced and mixed as usual. The orange peel should be boiled a little while and then minced fine. Any stewed fruit liquor or cider can be added with advantage. Makes 2 gallons--30 to 50 pies.
A bakery-scale formula that stretches a pound of meat across fifty pies with bread, molasses and dried fruit. It works, but almost nothing about the quantities or the storage assumptions translates directly to a home kitchen.
- Scale it down firstThe stated yield is two gallons, enough for 30 to 50 pies. Dividing by eight gives about a quart, enough for one generous deep-dish pie with some left over; every ingredient divides cleanly except the tablespoon of salt (about three-eighths of a teaspoon) and the ounce of pepper (about a teaspoon and a half).
- Ox heartBeef heart is lean, dense muscle with a mild flavour, and it was among the cheapest things a butcher sold. Butchers still sell it on request. Boil it until fully tender before mincing, or it stays tough no matter how long the mincemeat sits.
- SuetReal beef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys; ask a butcher, or buy packaged shredded suet. It should be minced or grated cold. It is not interchangeable with rendered tallow, which will not distribute the same way through the mix.
- The bread is the pointA pound and a half of bread steeped in two quarts of water and mashed is the bulking agent doing the work that meat does in an expensive mincemeat. The recipe says only to steep and mash it; stale plain bread is the obvious choice.
- Dried apples"Common dried apples" means ordinary cheap dried apple rings or slices, not apple chips. Boiling them in two quarts of water rehydrates them and produces the cooking liquid the recipe tells you to add back, so do not drain it away.
- Spice quantitiesFour ounces of mixed ground spice and a full ounce of black pepper across two gallons works out at roughly two tablespoons of spice and a teaspoon and a half of pepper per quart. The pepper is probably not an error; black pepper appears in other mincemeat recipes of the period, and the heat reads as warmth rather than sharpness once the sugar and molasses are in.
- StorageThere is no alcohol here, and no processing instructions; the sugar, vinegar and salt are the only preservatives in the mix. Treat it as a perishable cooked meat mixture: refrigerate and use within a week, or freeze in pie-sized portions.
- Baking the piesThe recipe stops at the filling and says nothing about baking. For a two-crust mince pie, a hot oven of around 425F for the first fifteen minutes to set the bottom crust, then 350F for another 25 to 30 minutes, works; the filling is already cooked, so you are only heating it through and browning the pastry.
Mincemeat began as genuinely meat: a medieval and early modern method of preserving chopped beef or mutton with sugar, dried fruit, vinegar and spice, and the meat only faded out of most commercial versions in the twentieth century. This version keeps the beef but strips out everything expensive, and the line "it will not intoxicate" is doing double duty. Brandy or cider spirit is often said to have been the preservative and flavouring in a good mincemeat, so leaving it out saved money; it also made the pies servable in the charitable institutions named in the first sentence. The American Pastry Cook was written for working bakers rather than housewives, which explains the two-gallon batch, the frank accounting of what can be substituted for what, and the untroubled use of ox heart, then one of the cheapest things a butcher sold.