MINCE-PIE
“Made any other way it’s not mince-pie.”
My favorite dish, and the best food in the world, is King Canute Pudding, but I shall not tell anybody how to make it, because that is a family secret. I am descended from Canute, and this was the pudding he ate and which made him feel so good that he went out and bade the tide to cease rising. The recipe is handed down in each generation of my tribe. It was my paternal grandmother who had it to pass on. She lived to be ninety-nine, thanks to her own wonderful cooking and a cantankerous disposition. Her mince-pie was a thing to write sonnets about. It was the second best food in the world. For ten years after I went to New York I lived on the memory of that pie and shuddered at the horrendous messes masquerading under the same name which were offered to me.
Then I moved back to New England and achieved a cook who, by the grace of God and the right bringing up could make a pie like it. For six years I knew happiness again. Then we lost Kate, the incomparable. My only hope was my wife and that was a feeble hope, indeed. She was born not in the pie belt, but in New York. She had never cooked. She was an Episcopalian. I approached the next Thanksgiving breakfast with gloomy forebodings.
But lo, a miracle. It was an orthodox mince-pie. It was Katie’s mince-pie. It was grandmother’s mince-pie—in short, it was mince-pie. Here is the way to make it. Made any other way it’s not mince-pie.
The Filling
Affix the grinder firmly to the edge of the table. What the palette is to the artist so is the grinder to the creator of mince meat. Then pass the following ingredients through the grinder, and from thence into a large kettle and let the latter and its glorious contents simmer on the stove for the best part of a morning, stirring them frequently so that no portion shall be neglected and fail to come into close union with the soothing heat that mellows all into one fragrant whole. Take from the stove and store in stone crocks or glass jars in the dark, and keep tightly covered. When about to fashion a pie take out as much of the meat as you desire, wet it with boiled cider and with fresh cider, too, if possible, so that it is not stiff, and bake between the crusts whose ingredients are given below. Eat hot with soft dairy cheese and coffee.
The meat should be thoroughly boiled the day before the mince meat is made, and the cider should be boiled down at home—not bought—until it is the consistency of molasses. Boil enough to last all winter and put in glass jars. Now, alas, that no liquors may be had, it is well to bottle fresh cider and put it away where it is cool, so that with luck it may still be fresh when in March you scrape the last jar for the last pie. Only use care when it is opened, or perchance it will be the ceiling rather than the pie which will be wet down.
- 5 cups cooked beef; after grinding
- 2½ cups suet
- 7½ cups apples
- 3 cups cider
- ½ cup vinegar
- 1 cup molasses
- 5 cups sugar
- ¾ pound citron
- 2½ pounds raisins
- 1½ pounds small raisins (not to be put through grinder)
- salt to taste
- juice and rind of 2 lemons
- juice and rind of 2 oranges
- 1 tablespoon mace and nutmeg (or 2 nutmegs grated)
- 2 tablespoons each of cinnamon, cloves and allspice
- 2 tablespoons lemon extract
- 1 teaspoon almond extract
- 3 cups liquor in which beef was cooked
If you have wine or brandy put in a cupful after taking from the fire.
The Crust
- 2 cups pastry flour sifted with teaspoon salt.
- ½ cup (generous) of lard mixed in with fingertips till the combination is fine and powdery.
Wet with cold water, mixing with knife, and cutting, till you can take the dough from the bowl without sticking to it. Divide in half, pat gently on floured marble slab, and roll out thin. Lift lower crust carefully, place in tin and trim off edges. Roll out from trimmings a strip half an inch wide and place on top of lower crust, around edge, first wetting edge slightly with cold water. Put in filling, place upper crust on top, first wetting edge of rim slightly with cold water, press together with tines of fork and trim off overhanging of upper crust. Prick a large T. M. on the top crust and bake in hot oven till brown.
(The T. M. stands for “’Tis Mince” to distinguish it from the pies labeled T. M. for “’Tain’t Mince.”)