The meat connection
The history of Mince Pies goes back a very long way to when originally they did indeed include minced meat. The British fondness of meat and fruit can be seen in Medieval recipes, although it seems not to have continued as enthusiastically in some parts of the country as others. After Yorkshire born chef Richard Guest moved to The Castle Hotel in Somerset, he found this combination quite foreign to his experience, so much so that he named his cookery book “Jam with Lamb”! Whilst eating Pstilla in Morocco, I was struck by how much like our Mince Pies this must be. There was no fruit, but meat (pigeon or chicken), almonds, sugar and spices. Here the strangeness come from sugar in what would otherwise be considered a savoury dish. I have taken to making a version of Pstilla with pheasant and serving in bite sized filo parcels before a meal.
Elizabeth Ayrton in The Cookery of England gives the following recipe from The Reading Manuscript of 1760: “Take a pound of tongue, a pound of beef suet, a pound of currants, a pint of claret, 10 john apples, season it with sugar, nutmeg, mace, cloves and a little salt, you may put some dried sweetmeats when you bake them if you please.”
Early recipes of mincemeat usually contained either tongue or lean beef until 100 years later when Mrs Beeton gave two versions, one using beef and one without (although retaining the beef suet). The suet is therefore an important reminder of the original recipe and, in my not very humble opinion, cannot be replaced by “vegetarian suet”. If you must, you could use ready prepared packet beef suet. You would be in fine company, Elizabeth David writes that when she was given the recipe for Mincemeat from a lifelong friend, Marian, she was firmly instructed that bought shredded suet should not be used or it would prevent the mincemeat from keeping. Elizabeth David disobeyed her instructions because “shredding suet is such a terrible task, I cannot make myself spend so much time and effort on it.” She reports that adding more brandy always brings a dried-out mincemeat back to life.
Fresh suet has become the most difficult ingredient to obtain, but I do order it from a good butcher every year because I feel that despite the work, there is a fragrance from fresh suet that you do not get from a packet and it is part of nose-to-tail eating, hopefully you even know something about how the animal was reared. So, an annual session is worth it to have a small supply in the freezer through the winter from the Christmas Pudding to savoury suet puddings and dumplings. The tip I will pass on is that freezing the suet before mincing makes it easier to handle. You will still need to separate the fat from its connective membrane, which tends to wind itself around the mincer mechanism if not removed. Before the kitchen mincer became an established piece of kitchen equipment at the end of the 19th century, hand chopping or pounding really was a chore too far for most, but the mechanical mincer quickly brought minced meat dishes into popularity. I can clearly remember my grandmother’s Spong mincer, clamped to the work surface, being in constant use, not just for meat but bread too. I think we were allowed to use it to make food for the birds!
I now have an electric mincer, bought for making sausages, although this can become clogged when mincing suet. I usually just chop still frozen lumps in the food processor, but you can also use a coarse grating blade, electric or manual.
Cheat on the suet if it would otherwise prevent you making your own mincemeat but remember that the reason it is going to taste so superior to any you can buy is because you will buy the finest of every other ingredient. For example, do hand chop caps of peel (I buy these online) and use freshly ground spices.
Apple content
Despite the caution about mincemeat given to Elizabeth David, the keeping quality of the mincemeat is more dependent on the apple it contains. It is noticeable that older recipes contain a higher proportion of apple than more modern recipes. Delia Smith writes “In the past people used to have trouble storing it (mincemeat). This was because the high percentage of apples oozed too much juice and the juice started to ferment. In my recipe the mincemeat is placed in a barely warm oven and so the suet gradually melts and as this happens it coats all the fruits, including the apples, sealing in the juices.
This long slow cooking (3 hours at 120˚C) is the solution recommended by the government in Home Preservation of Fruit and Vegetables which was first published by HMSO in 1929 based on the work done at Long Ashton Research Station near Bristol. It has been reprinted several times and the scientific research carried out at Long Ashton, particularly in respect of cider, remains highly regarded. I’ve never tried cooking the mincemeat before potting, but others (including Mrs Beeton) have cooked the apple to a pulp rather than using it raw to avoid the fermentation issue. I prefer to rely on keeping everything cold and sterile, although I realise that finding a cool, dark place to store it might be far harder in todays overheated houses than it was in the past. I have a secure box in the garage for storing things like Christmas Puddings and Mincemeat, but if you don’t have anywhere the cooked apple option might be best for you.
There has certainly been much debate about the type of apples to use. Sharp (cooking) apples are often all that are specified but remembering that the Medieval recipe stipulated john-apples, and I remembering these being mentioned in Thomas Hardy’s The Woodlanders as bitter-sweets (i.e. cider apples), I researched further. AI was able to tell me that john apples were known in Elizabethan times but that subsequently more that one type has been known by that name or Apple John. What they do apparently have in common is a reputation for being long-keeper. The suffix “pippin” often used to denote this quality in eating apples, although it can be used for any apple grown from a pip. Foxwhelp, an old cider variety from the Gloucestershire/Herefordshire borders, I have also seen specified. One lady contacted me looking for a variety called Wellington to make her mincemeat. It turns out that this is just another name for Dumelow’s Seedling, which has largely been replaced by Bramley’s Seedling, the variety she was particularly trying to avoid because it is too wet! You will struggle to buy any other variety of cooking apple today. My recommendation is Catshead, yet another very old variety of cooking apple, but with a much drier flesh. I picked some for the purpose as usual this year, but before I had time to use them, they were already turning yellow and some of the flesh was browning, a symptom of the hot summer Bruised or browned flesh is the thing that Elizabeth David warns against, so I had to include a small amount of Ashmead’s Kernel, at least still not fully ripe so not likely to start fermenting, but a dessert apple rather than sharp. My apple content is about half that used in many recipes. I have also started to reduce the sugar content. The following recipe is certainly not definitive but has stood me in good stead for many years .
The quantities below make about 4½lb/2kg of mincemeat, enough to generously fill 6 dozen deep mince pies (I like a good ratio of filling to pastry). I also use mincemeat to stuff apples for baking, and generally finish up any left after Christmas in an Apple and Mincemeat Plait. Making in November gives the mixture a good few weeks to mature before you start using and it should all be used up within 3 months, although as already mentioned, more brandy can reinvigorate a drying mixture.
Makes 4½ lb/2 kg
½ lb/250g currants
½ lb/250g raisins
½ lb/250g sultanas
4 oz/125g natural glace cherries
4 oz/125g candied peel caps (lemon, orange and citron)
4 oz/125g shelled walnuts (optional)
8 oz/250g minced or grated suet
12 oz demerara sugar
2 level tsps mixed spice (equal parts nutmeg, cinnamon and mace plus a pinch of ground clove)
3- 4 fl oz cider brandy
½ lb/250g cooking apples (ideally Catshead variety, weighed after peeling and coring) minced or coarsely grated
Clean and rinse in boiling water a large mixing bowl in which the mixture will sit for 48 hours to allow the dried fruit to swell. Usually the apple is added at the start, but leaving it until the end of this time will eliminate the risk of it fermenting during this initial step if you have doubt that you have a cool enough place in which to do this.
Rinse the dried fruit in water to clean. Quarter the cherries and finely dice the peel. Add all of these ingredients to the bowl together with the suet, chopped walnuts if using, sugar, ground spices and brandy. Give everything a good stir, cover and leave in a cool place, stirring periodically over the next 48 hours.
After 48 hours, add the apple if you have not already done so and give another good stir to combine.
Sterilise glass jars and lids (in the dishwasher or at 110˚C in the oven). When the jars have cooled, fill with the mincemeat pressing down as you do so to exclude air. Cover the surface with waxed discs or greased parchment paper before sealing the lid. Move to a cold dark place for storing.
Mince pies – the pastry
Apparently, the earliest mince pies were boat shaped, with a lid, to represent the Christ Child in the cradle. They were forbidden during the Reformation, so perhaps we switched to the round pies when they returned?
The pastry I use is an enriched sweetened one, made in the food processor : 4 oz butter, 2 oz caster sugar, 8 oz plain flour, 1 egg yolk, approx. 3 dessertspoons of cold water to bind for 1 dozen. I now use a star shaped cutter for the lid so that a little filling is showing. This pastry is soft when eaten warm but if you will be serving them cold, I would use a different pastry, perhaps flaky. The pastry should be rolled thinly. Too many mince pies are spoiled by poor pastry.
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