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Mince Pie Meat II
5 cups chopped cooked beef 1½ cups chopped suet 7½ cups chopped apples 3 cups cider ½ cup vinegar 1 cup molasses 5 cups sugar ¾ lb. citron, finely chopped 2½ cups whole raisins 1½ cups raisins, finely chopped
This is the proportion list for a large batch of mincemeat filling, meant to be simmered down before it ever meets pastry. The quantities make roughly 5 to 6 quarts, enough for six or seven nine-inch pies.
- Cook it down slowlyCombine everything in a heavy pot and simmer, uncovered and stirred often, until the apples collapse and the cider and molasses reduce to a thick, glossy mass — about an hour and a half. Mincemeat that is still soupy will boil out of the crust.
- The beefUse a well-exercised cut simmered until tender — chuck, shin, or leftover boiled brisket — then chop it fine rather than grinding it to paste. Five cups is roughly 1½ to 2 lb of cooked meat, from something like 2½ to 3 lb raw.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys; a butcher will usually supply it on request. Chill it well and chop or grate it, discarding the papery membrane. Frozen grated suet is easier to handle than fresh.
- CiderHere cider means unfermented sweet cider, not the alcoholic drink sold under that name in Britain. Fresh unfiltered apple juice is the closest substitute.
- CitronCandied citron, the thick peel of a citrus fruit preserved in syrup, is still sold at holiday time and in Middle Eastern groceries. Candied orange or lemon peel stands in acceptably. The printed page gives ¾ lb., as our text now reads.
- Spices are absentMincemeat recipes of this period generally carried cinnamon, cloves, mace or nutmeg, and this list has none. Season to taste — about a tablespoon of cinnamon and a teaspoon each of cloves, mace and nutmeg would suit a batch this size.
- StorageDo not treat this as a shelf-stable preserve. Refrigerate what you will use within a week or two and freeze the rest in pie-sized portions; the sugar and acid alone are not a reliable safeguard for a meat mixture at room temperature.
- To fill a pieA nine-inch double-crust pie takes about 3 cups. Bake at 425F for 10 minutes, then reduce to 350F for another 30 to 35 minutes, until the crust is browned and the filling bubbles at the vents.
Mincemeat began as a genuine meat dish — spiced, dried-fruit-laden pies were a medieval way of stretching and preserving butchered beef and mutton, and the sugar, vinegar and dried fruit did real preservative work before refrigeration. Over time the balance shifted decisively toward the fruit, and the meat was on its way out; eventually most American mincemeat contained no beef at all, only suet, and later not even that. That this book prints more than one version, with beef and suet in serious quantity, places it at the hinge point: mincemeat was still understood as a preparation of meat, made in quart-scale batches in late autumn when apples and fresh suet were both plentiful and a household expected to bake pies through the holidays.