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Mock Mince Pies
Mrs. J. King.
Six tablespoons of rolled crackers, two cups of warm water, one cup of chopped raisins, one cup of whole raisins, half a cup of vinegar, half a cup of melted butter, one cup of yellow sugar, one cup of molasses, one tablespoon cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.
A cracker-crumb mince filling from the era when a pie was expected on the table whether or not there was meat, fruit or cider in the house. The original gives quantities only, so the handling is left to the cook.
- Rolled crackersMost likely plain soda or water crackers crushed with a rolling pin rather than sweet or graham crumbs, though the recipe does not specify. Six tablespoons is on the order of 30 g of crumbs; they swell in the warm water and, with the raisins, stand in for the chopped meat and apple of a true mincemeat.
- Yellow sugarNineteenth-century yellow or "soft" sugar was a partly refined brown sugar. Light brown sugar, packed, is the closest modern equivalent.
- The spice line is ambiguous"One tablespoon cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg" can be read as a tablespoon of each or a tablespoon divided among the three. A tablespoon of ground cloves alone would dominate everything, which argues for reading it as about a tablespoon total, weighted toward cinnamon.
- The vinegar is doing real workHalf a cup supplies the sharpness that boiled cider or sour apples give a genuine mincemeat. Cider vinegar suits the mixture better than white, though the recipe specifies only "vinegar."
- Method the recipe assumesSteep the crumbs in the warm water, stir in everything else, and let the mixture stand until the raisins plump and the crumbs have absorbed the liquid. It should be spoonable, not runny, before it goes into the shell.
- OvenThe recipe gives no baking direction at all. Treat it as a double-crust pie filling and bake as you would any such pie until the crust colours and the vents bubble. The filling needs no cooking; the baking is for the pastry.
- YieldThe quantities are generous, running to several cups of filling, so expect to fill more than one 9-inch double-crust pie. No pastry is given, so use any standard butter or lard crust.
Mock mince pies belong to a large family of nineteenth-century "mock" dishes — mock turtle soup, mock oysters, mock duck — in which a cheap larder stands in for an expensive one. Real mincemeat meant beef or suet, apples, citron, brandy and cider, laid down in a crock in the autumn; this version reaches the same dark, spiced, sweet-sour place with crackers, raisins, molasses and vinegar, all of which a household could be expected to have on hand in February. Crackers standing in for fruit turn up in mock apple pie as well — typically whole or broken rather than crumbed — the ancestor of the Ritz cracker pie that later ran on the back of the box. That the recipe is credited to Mrs. J. King is typical of community cookbooks of this period: the name attached was both an attribution and a small guarantee that the thing had been made and eaten.