Dear All,
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So being British or Welsh and staying in the Mid-West over the Christmas holiday I wanted some festive food from back home, but it is difficult to get, and only specialist foods shops stock jars of mincemeat for example. I had made something like mincemeat once before when I was at home because I wanted Organic and vegetarian mincemeat so it was a time to try again. Mincemeat originates from a time (a cookery book will tell you) when people did mix meat and dried fruits together and make pies of the mixture, but now all that is left in the recipe is lard (meat fat) which combines with sugar to make a thick sweet spicy coating for the dried fruits making up the rest of the mixture.
Mince pies are heavy beasts and not respected too well now within the Christmas culture of the United Kingdom. While every household would have been making the little pies before the Christmas festivities to give to family and visitors now the industrial nature of food means they are cheap to buy, full of empty calories from sugar and saturated fat and a little nasty. There are a variety of levels of costs for your mince pie from the Fortum and Mason mince pie to the Adsa, Smartprice pie. And then there are bad pies at work and in the office through the season being offered to colleagues and clients. So all this gives the heavy little pie a difficult reputation. Of course, I am not sure how Welsh the mince pie is, although it is eaten and it does exist in Wales over Christmas.
In 1861 Mrs Beeton published a recipe for the Mince Pie in her Household Management book using puff pastry and her own mincemeat. She writes:
Mode.—Make some good puff-paste by recipe No. 1205; roll it out to the thickness of about 1/4 inch, and line some good-sized pattypans with it; fill them with mincemeat, cover with the paste, and cut it off all round close to the edge of the tin. Put the pies into a brisk oven, to draw the paste up, and bake for 25 minutes, or longer, should the pies be very large; brush them over with the white of an egg, beaten with the blade of a knife to a stiff froth; sprinkle over pounded sugar, and put them into the oven for a minute or two, to dry the egg; dish the pies on a white d’oyley, and serve hot. They may be merely sprinkled with pounded sugar instead of being glazed, when that mode is preferred. To re-warm them, put the pies on the pattypans, and let them remain in the oven for 10 minutes or 1/4 hour, and they will be almost as good as if freshly made.
MINCE MEAT RECIPE (Mrs Beeton's):
INGREDIENTS – 2 lbs. of raisins, 3 lbs. of currants, 1–1/2 lb. of lean beef, 3 lbs. of beef suet, 2 lbs. of moist sugar, 2 oz. of citron, 2 oz. of candied lemon-peel, 2 oz. of candied orange-peel, 1 small nutmeg, 1 pottle of apples, the rind of 2 lemons, the juice of 1, 1/2 pint of brandy.
This can be scaled down and I did and in post Part 2 I will describe my recipe.
Mode.—Stone and cut the raisins once or twice across, but do not chop them; wash, dry, and pick the currants free from stalks and grit, and mince the beef and suet, taking care that the latter is chopped very fine; slice the citron and candied peel, grate the nutmeg, and pare, core, and mince the apples; mince the lemon-peel, strain the juice, and when all the ingredients are thus prepared, mix them well together, adding the brandy when the other things are well blended; press the whole into a jar, carefully exclude the air, and the mincemeat will be ready for use in a fortnight.
My method was not to leave for a fortnight but to gently cook in a very low over 100 degrees centigrade. The photo is what
resulted. A big pie - which is also a very traditionally approach. More to follow about my best ever Mince Pie recipe from scratch...