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Mince Meat
Mrs. Higgins.
Six pounds of beef and six pounds of apples, chopped fine; four pounds of sugar, two of citron, three of raisins, three of currants, one of suet, two quarts of boiled cider, one-half cup of salt, two nutmegs, two tablespoons of ground cloves, two of allspice, two of cinnamon; when used, enough sweet cider should be added to make the mixture quite moist.
A contributed mincemeat of the old, genuinely meaty kind, written for a cook who already knew the drill. The quantities are enormous by modern standards and several ingredients need translating.
- The beef must be cooked firstPeriod mincemeat recipes generally started with lean beef simmered until tender, cooled, and then chopped fine; this recipe assumes it and does not say so. A cut such as neck, shin or chuck, boiled until tender and trimmed of gristle, then chopped; the recipe makes no use of the cooking liquid.
- YieldThe listed quantities total some 25 lb of solids plus two quarts of boiled cider, enough to fill a dozen or more 9-inch pies at about 3 to 4 cups each. Quartering it gives a manageable batch.
- StorageNothing is said about keeping it, but the sugar, salt and the acidity of the boiled cider are what preserved a batch this size. Treat it as a perishable cooked-meat mixture: refrigerate for a few weeks or freeze in pie-sized portions. Do not water-bath can it — there is no tested home-canning process for mincemeat containing meat.
- Boiled ciderSweet cider reduced by roughly seven-eighths to a dark, tart syrup, a New England staple sold by the jug. Two quarts of it means about four gallons of fresh cider simmered down. Bottled boiled cider is still made commercially; unsulphured apple cider concentrate is the nearest substitute.
- SuetBeef kidney fat from a butcher, not the packaged shredded suet with added flour. Chill or freeze it before grating. A pound of unsalted butter, chilled and grated, works if suet is unavailable, though the texture is softer.
- Citron and currantsCitron is candied citron peel (the citrus fruit; a candied melon of the same name was also used in American kitchens), sold at holiday time; two pounds is very assertive, and candied orange peel or a reduced quantity will suit modern palates. Currants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants.
- The saltHalf a cup — roughly 5 oz of table salt — reads alarming but is spread through some twenty-five pounds of sweet, fatty mixture. If using coarse kosher salt, measure by weight, not volume.
- SpicesTwo whole nutmegs grate to roughly 2 tablespoons. Buy ground cloves, allspice and cinnamon fresh; a six-tablespoon total of stale supermarket spice will taste of dust.
- FinishingThe final instruction is the operative one: the mixture is stiff from storage and needs sweet cider stirred in at the moment of filling, until it is loose but not soupy. The recipe gives no baking directions at all.
Mincemeat is the surviving descendant of the medieval meat pie sweetened with dried fruit and spice, and this 1870s version is one of the generations in which the meat was still literally there. The boiled cider is the tell that marks it as a northern recipe: apple growers reduced surplus cider to syrup as a way of keeping it, and the resulting sour-sweet concentrate did in New England kitchens roughly what brandy or sherry did in English ones. The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago from recipes contributed by named local women and sold to benefit a charitable home, which is why the page opens with "Mrs. Higgins" rather than a method.