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Mince Pies
1805. Mince pies are made in small patty-pans, which are lined with puff-paste, and, after putting in some mince-meat, covering them over with more paste, and baking. 806. To Make the Mince-meat. - Take three pounds of suet finely chopped and sifted, two pounds of currants, three pounds of raisins, and one pound of apples, all chopped very small, three pounds of moist sugar, three-quarters of a pint of red and white wine mixed, a glass of brandy, the peel of two small lemons, the juice of one, two ounces of candied peel, cut; mix all together with a quarter of an ounce of cinnamon, a quarter of an ounce of mace, and one small nutmeg, all finely powdered. Keep it in a close covered jar, and, if kept a twelvemonth, it may require the addition of a little more wine. * Another Receipt. - Take two pounds of suet, chopped very fine and sifted, two pounds of currants, one pound of sun raisins, two pounds of apples, half a pound of bread, one pound and a quarter of moist sugar, three-quarters of a pint of red and white wine, mixed, a glass of brandy, the peel of two small lemons and the juice of one, four ounces of candied orange-peel, cut; mix all together with cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, and salt, to the taste. If preferred, leave out two ounces of bread and put in two biscuits.
Two mincemeat mixtures and a bare sketch of the pies themselves. Both are large batches built for a Victorian Christmas larder rather than a single tin of twelve.
- The hinge: keep water outFresh apple is the main source of free moisture, and the sugar, suet, dried fruit and spirit are there to hold it; the wine and brandy add liquid of their own. Chop the apple genuinely small so it collapses into the mix, pack the jars tight to exclude air, and store in the refrigerator rather than a cool larder if you intend to keep it for months.
- Suet, chopped and siftedFresh beef suet from a butcher, chopped fine — often with a little flour dredged in to keep the pieces separate — and passed through a sieve. Packet shredded suet, beef or vegetarian, does the same job with none of the work; use it weight for weight.
- Patty-pans and pasteA shallow 12-hole bun or tartlet tin, not a muffin tin. Line, fill barely level with the rim, cap with a second round of puff pastry and seal — overfilled pies boil out and glue themselves in.
- OvenNo temperature is given because none could be. Puff paste wants a hot oven, 425F, for 15–20 minutes, until the lids are risen and properly browned. The filling only needs heating through.
- Moist sugar and sun raisinsMoist sugar is light brown soft sugar. "Sun raisins" are raisins dried in the sun rather than by artificial heat; large Lexia or muscatel raisins are a reasonable modern stand-in, and ordinary raisins will serve. Currants are dried Zante currants, not fresh blackcurrants.
- Liquid measuresThree-quarters of an imperial pint is 15 fl oz, a little under two US cups, of mixed red and white wine. "A glass of brandy" in this period is roughly a wineglass, 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz.
- Bread and biscuits in the second versionHalf a pound of fine white breadcrumbs absorbs juice from the larger quantity of apple. The "two biscuits" offered as a substitute are plain hard biscuits or rusks, crushed — think of them as dry crumbs, not sweet cookies.
- YieldThe first mixture comes to roughly 13 lb of mincemeat, enough for something in the order of a hundred small pies. Halving or quartering it changes nothing structurally.