Publius & Co.

Putting the "meat" back in "mince meat"

I'd never had a mince meat pie until I was in my teens, when my stepmother served one for Thanksgiving. Of course, we (that being me, my brother, and my sister) asked if there was any meat in it. We were assured there was not, much to our relief. Meat in a sweet pie like that would be gross.

Fast forward about thirty years, to just last week, and when it came time for Thanksgiving dessert, I was given a choice between pumpkin pie or mince meat pie. I chose the mince meat pie (no whipped cream--or Cool Whip, in my stepmother's case), satisfied there would be no meat in the pie to gross me out.

A day or two later, the gf mentioned she had two pieces of pumpkin pie left over and I asked if I could have one, saying I hadn't had any for Thanksgiving. She asked me what I had, and I told her, and that brought forth a Thanksgiving story from her: Her father's aunt (who is in her eighties) mentioned her mother would make mince meat pie with meat in it.

Gross.

Then intrigue. My stepmother's pie is kind of a sharp tart pie, and I wondered what meat in it would taste like. Heck, I wondered what kind of meat would be used, would the spices be different...and when I wonder about food, there's only one Authority I trust above all others: Fannie Farmer. Even if she's been dead for nearly 90 years, Fannie Merritt Farmer is my go-to girl for all things culinary.

What makes Fannie Farmer the authority for me is the simple fact she taught so many mothers how to cook, either at Miss Farmer's School of Cookery (a school she established to teach housewives how to cook) or thru her books. Look at it this way: Miss Farmer might well have been the authority your mother turned to for questions culinary.

The gf and I have five different versions of Fannie Farmer's cookbook between the two of us. Both of my copies were Christmas gifts: A reproduction of her first Boston Cooking School Cookbook, first published in 1896, and the 12th edition, published in 1979.

The gf has her paternal grandmother's Boston Cooking School Cookbook, the New Edition, Completely Revised, printed in 1930 (as far as I can determine, the 1930 edition was either the fourth or fifth edition), and her maternal grandmother's 11th edition, copyrighted in 1959 and reprinted in 1965 (my mother also had a copy of this edition, but I've no idea where it is). My gf also has the latest edition, the thirteenth, originally printed in 1990 and bought via amazon.com in 2002.

For everyone else, bartleby.com has reprinted the 1918 edition (which I believe is the second revision of the original, and therefore the third edition) online, in its entirety.

(Fannie Farmer is also a fun history lesson where American cooking is concerned.)

So me and the gf broke out the various editions and damned if the recipes for Mince Pies didn't call for beef: Four pounds of it, as well as two pounds of suet, in addition to the raisins and apples and spices you'd expect in what to me had been, up to that point, a type of fruit pie. I also found out it's called, simply, a mince pie.

My first thought was Just how freakin' big are these pies, anyway? A different cookbook, Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book (1903) gave me a clue to the answer:

When all is well mixed, stir in a quart of sherry and a pint of the best brandy. Mix thoroughly and pack down in a stone crock...Mince-meat should be prepared several weeks before it is needed, that it may "ripen" and become mellow.

In other words, it was intended to be made in large quantities then stored indefinitely. Make it in early or mid-October and you've got mince pies for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So I made one. I used a recipe from the 1930 edition that was called "Quick Mincemeat" and was portioned for only one pie. I confess I bought the crust.

1 cup chopped apple
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup currants
1/4 cup butter
1 Tablespoon molasses
1 Tablespoon boiled cider
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon powedered cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (the reciped called for 1/2 grated nutmeg, but I couldn't find whole nutmegs)
1/8 teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon salt (I used a couple of shakes because of the next ingredient)
stock to moisten (I used a couple of cooking spoonfuls of canned beef broth and cut back on the salt--that might have been too much)
1 cup chopped cook meat (I cooked ground beef, measured it out, then chopped it up very fine)
2 Tablespoons fruit jelly (or blueberry preserves)
Mix all of the ingredients except for the meat and jelly together in a saucepan; simmer for one hour. Add meat and jelly and cook for an additional fifteen minutes.

I then put the filling into an eight-inch pie pan (crust on the top and bottom) and baked it for 36 minutes at about 360 degrees F. Again, that might have been a bit too long. At thirty minutes the crust was not quite golden brown; at 36 minutes it was just short of starting to burn.

The gf called up her father's aunt, who was actually excited about a mince meat pie, even if she did ask, "Whatever possesed him to do that?" I'm heading over to her place to share some pie with her and have my ears talked off.

I'll let you know how it came out later.

Four of our five editions of the Fannie Farmer cookbook. Clockwise from top left they are a reproduction of the 1896 edition, 1930 fourth or fifth edition, 1959 11th edition (reprinted in 1965), and 1979 12th edition.

Posted by Victor at Diciembre 2, 2004 05:00 AM