Not many people make real mincemeat anymore. I think it’s high time we turned that trend around! Meat gives mincemeat a superior texture and flavor, not to mention a satisfying historical frisson that really completes the experience. Start by cooking your ground beef.
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If you enjoy mincemeat and/or British puddings, you’ve no doubt seen suet on an ingredient list. An easy-melting, mild-tasting fat taken from the kidney region of a steer, suet is akin to leaf lard on a pig. Brits of yester-year employed it as an inexpensive fat for enriching sweet baking.
It’s actually still used quite a bit, especially during the holidays, which is why you can still find commercially-shredded and packaged suet in the British Isles. Here in States the only kind of suet we can get comes straight from the steer, so we have to do the shredding ourselves.
READ ONA regular reader (who’s calling himself “Vlad” this weekend) writes:
On behalf of the life impaired community, I wish to thank you for so eloquently highlighting an important point: that people without a pulse can still make a positive contribution to society. Those of us who are currently dealing with what is widely considered to be life’s ultimate disability thank you.
My pleasure, er…Vlad. Don’t forget I come from Chicago, a city famous for championing the rights of the deceased. Dead people have been voting there for decades.
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I’m always more than willing to take a detour into history. Happily for me there’s an indirect connection between this week’s subject and one of the weirdest, most macabre stories of World War II: Operation Mincemeat. Since we’re closing in on Halloween, the story — a tale of how a dead guy helped misdirect the Nazis during one of the most important Allied invasions of the war — seems appropriate.
READ ONEver since Julia Child’s death, food journalists, food celebrities, cookbook authors, bloggers and cultural historians have expended millions of keystrokes lionizing her. I’d say most if not all of that worshipful press is deserved. For Julia Child was a titan in the field of home cooking, having empowered millions of women — and more recently men — to attempt culinary feats once thought too difficult for the average Jane (or Joe).
Amid all these hagiographics, however, it’s important not to forget that Julia Child was but the latest in a line of innovators that have given us home cooking as we know it. That line — among English speakers anyway — stretches back to Hannah Glasse (author of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy in 1747) and can be traced through Eliza Acton (Modern Cookery for Private Families, 1845) and Isabella Beeton (Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861) to Fannie Farmer, author of the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook.
READ ONThis is close to the classic Fannie Farmer recipe from The Boston Cooking School Cookbook. The original has too high a proportion of apples in my opinion, but if you want the original recipe, double the apples. I’ve also changed the processes a little, since the original called for boiling the beef. Ground beef, cooked in a pan and drained, will work just fine for our purposes (and will retain more of the beef’s flavor). This is for a small quantity, but it can be scaled up to your heart’s content!
1 lb. lean ground beef
1/2 lb. suet
1 lb. apples (Macintosh or Granny Smith)
1 quince (omit if you can’t find any, make it up with more apple)
12 ounces sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 pint cider
1 lb. raisins
12 ounces currants
2 ounces candied citron
1 cup brandy
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 nutmeg, grated
1/2 teaspoon pepper
salt to taste
October was a big month for me as a boy. It was birthday time for my twin sister and me. Halloween came a week later, and right in between was the annual Pumpkin Festival in Sycamore, Illinois. Sycamore was over an hour away from our house in Hinsdale, but an old fraternity brother of my father’s was the pastor of the Episcopal church there. Culinarily speaking, that church was the epicenter of the whole festival, since it was there that the mincemeat was made.
It was an elaborate, highly clandestine operation. Dozens of women participated, however like a team of World War II code-breakers, none but the most senior had any concept of what they were doing. The recipe, you see, was a big BIG secret. Only one or two of the octogenarians working the kitchen actually knew the proportions. The rest of the team — which was mostly dedicated to peeling and chopping — was arrayed outside the church kitchen and not allowed through the doors. You’d have thought mad science of some kind was going on in there.
READ ONMore than happy to tell you all about it, Lucy! Suet is beef fat, but not just any sort of beef fat. It’s fat taken from right near the kidneys of the steer. It’s the mildest-tasting, easiest-melting fat on the animal, which is why it’s used for an application like mincemeat. The equivalent fat on a pig is known as leaf lard, and by no coincidence whatsoever it has also been prized by bakers over the centuries (I’m a big fan of it myself). Here’s what fresh suet looks like:
READ ONGood question, reader Nicole! In Britain, around Christmas (traditions vary as to the most auspicious time to consume one, before Christmas or after, during the 12 Days). However mincemeat itself was/is traditionally made around October so the mincemeat has time to age. Mincemeat is an Autumn – New Year’s tradition in America.
READ ONI wrote a little about this last week, but now that mincemeat is an official project, the subject bears a little more scrutiny. Someone who’s never heard of the stuff before might be forgiven for thinking it’s simply minced meat. But of course it isn’t. At least not these days. Meat hasn’t been a common ingredient in mincemeat for over 100 years.
The “mince” part of the name, well, that’s still accurate. Although I should mention that on this side of the pond we don’t use the word “mince” very much. We employ words like “grind”, “chop” and “shred” to the same end.
So what’s “minced” in mince meat?
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