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Lemon Mince Meat Without Meat
Where brandy is disapproved of, use double quantity of strictly medicinal old port wine instead. The spirit evaporates in baking. 4 lemons. 2 pounds of white sugar. 2 pounds of currants. 1 pound of seedless raisins. 2 pounds of suet, 1 ounce of mixed ground spices. 1/2 pint of brandy and port-wine mixed.
Use lemons that are ripe thin-skinned, not harsh and bitter. Boil them in a quart of water till the water is half boiled away. Then squeeze the juice into the sugar, throw away the seeds, and mince the lemon rinds small. Cut or chop the raisins, mince the suet fine and mix all the ingredients together. Keep in a covered jar.
The water the lemons were boiled in should be added to the mince. This quantity makes about 20 pies, according to size.
A meatless mincemeat built on boiled whole lemons, dried fruit and suet, meant to be jarred and drawn on through the pie season. Two things need attention before you start: sourcing real suet, and where the finished mince is stored.
- Storage is the hingeThe lemon cooking water is stirred back in, which dilutes the sugar and spirit that would otherwise do the preserving, and the suet is raw. Refrigerate the jar and use it within a few weeks, or freeze it in pie-sized portions; a covered crock in a cool larder is not the same thing as a modern pantry.
- SuetAsk a butcher for beef leaf or kidney suet, and keep it very cold so it shreds rather than smears; grating it on the coarse side of a box grater with the block half-frozen works better than chopping. Packaged shredded suet, where sold, is usually beef fat coated with flour, and a vegetable version is sold alongside it. Vegetable shortening can stand in, though the flavour flattens.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Rinse and pick them over; older stock benefits from a brief soak in a little of the wine.
- Half a pint of brandy and portEight fluid ounces (one American cup) or ten if the measure is Imperial. The note that "the spirit evaporates in baking" is not true in any complete sense: a baked pie retains a noticeable fraction of the alcohol added to the filling.
- Mixed ground spicesAn ounce is roughly 4 tablespoons, which reads as a lot but is spread across some seven pounds of fruit, sugar and fat. A workable blend is cinnamon and nutmeg leading, with clove, allspice, mace and a little ginger behind.
- The lemonsThin-skinned and ripe, as specified. Boiling a quart of water down to a pint takes upwards of half an hour uncovered, depending on the pan, and leaves the rinds soft enough to mince finely; underboiled peel stays leathery in the finished pie. Scrub them first, since the whole rind is eaten.
- ChoppingA food processor handles the raisins and rind in short pulses, but stop well before a paste. The suet should be added by hand at the end so the machine's warmth does not soften it.
- YieldAbout nine pounds of mince, which the book puts at twenty pies. Reckon roughly a pound and a half of filling for a 9-inch double-crust pie, so more like six large pies, or a great many small tarts.
Mincemeat began as a genuine meat preparation, a way of extending shredded beef or tongue with dried fruit, sugar and spirit, and through the nineteenth century the meat quietly dropped out of many household versions while the suet stayed. Lemon mincemeat of this type belongs to that later, sweeter tradition, with boiled whole lemons supplying the acidity and bite that beef and its broth once gave; the technique of simmering the fruit whole until the peel is tender is the same one behind marmalade, and it appears in British cookery books of the period as well as American ones. The opening line is a period tell: temperance sentiment ran strong in households on both sides of the Atlantic, and calling for "strictly medicinal old port" as the acceptable substitute for brandy, with the assurance that the spirit bakes off, is the sort of accommodation cookbook writers made for a reader who kept liquor only for the sickroom.