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Mock Mince Pie
Mrs. G. F. DeForest, One egg, three or four large crackers, or six or eight small ones, one-half cup of molasses, one-half cup sugar, one-half cup vinegar, one-half cup strong tea, one cup chopped raisins, a small piece butter, spice and salt.
A cracker pie: the filling is an ingredient list with no method, which was normal in a contributed-recipe book where every reader already knew how to fill a two-crust pie. Here is what the list assumes.
- What the crackers are"Large crackers" most likely means New England common crackers or plain soda crackers, unsalted or barely salted, rather than saltines with a heavy salt crust or sweet biscuits. Roll or crush them coarsely; they absorb the liquid and stand in for the chopped apple and suet of real mincemeat. Period cracker sizes varied a great deal, so the crumb yield of six to eight small ones is hard to pin down.
- The hinge: let it standLetting the mixed filling stand twenty to thirty minutes before it goes into the shell should give the crumbs time to take up the liquid. The recipe itself gives no such direction.
- Vinegar and teaThese are doing the work of cider and brandy in an ordinary mincemeat: acid and tannin to cut the sweetness. Use cider vinegar, and brew the tea strong and let it cool. Half a cup of vinegar reads alarmingly on paper but is balanced by the molasses and sugar.
- MolassesThe molasses generally sold for cooking in this period was milder than modern blackstrap. Use light or full-flavour molasses; blackstrap is bitter enough to take over the pie.
- "Spice"Left unspecified because the blend was assumed knowledge. For mincemeat this normally meant cinnamon with smaller amounts of clove, nutmeg and allspice; about a teaspoon in total is a reasonable starting point. Salt is a good pinch, no more.
- Assembly and ovenThe quantities make about enough for one nine-inch two-crust pie. The recipe gives no baking instruction; as a modern starting point, 425F for the first ten to fifteen minutes to set the bottom crust, then 350F for another thirty until the top browns and the filling bubbles at the vents.
- Butter"A small piece" is a tablespoon or so. It can be dotted over the filling rather than stirred in, though the recipe does not specify.
- ServingEight slices. It is better the day after, once the crumb has fully softened, and it does not need cream.
Mock mince pies belong to a long American habit of imitating an expensive dish with pantry staples: no suet, no beef, no apples out of season, no brandy. Crackers supplied the body, raisins the fruit, and vinegar and strong tea the sharpness and tannic depth that cider and spirits gave the real thing, which also made the pie acceptable in temperance households where a brandied mincemeat was not. Versions built on soda crackers, and the closely related green tomato and dried-apple mock mincemeats, turn up across mid- and late-nineteenth-century American community cookbooks. The Home Cook Book was compiled in Chicago in the 1870s from recipes contributed by named local women and sold to benefit charity, which is why this entry arrives as Mrs. G. F. DeForest's list of proportions and nothing more: the compiler printed what was sent in, and the method was assumed knowledge.