2 lbs. lean fresh beef, boiled, and when cold, chopped fine.
1 lb. beef-suet, cleared of strings and minced to powder.
5 lbs. apples, pared and chopped.
2 lbs. raisins, seeded and chopped.
1 lb. sultana raisins, washed and picked over.
2 lbs. currants, washed and _carefully_ picked over.
¾ lb. citron, cut up fine.
2 tablespoonfuls cinnamon.
1 teaspoonful powdered nutmeg.
2 tablespoonfuls mace.
1 tablespoonful cloves.
1 tablespoonful allspice.
1 tablespoonful fine salt.
2½ lbs. brown sugar.
1 quart brown Sherry.
1 pint best brandy.
Mince-meat made by this receipt will keep all winter in a cool place.
Keep in stone jars, tied over with double covers. Add a little more
liquor (if it should dry out), when you make up a batch of pies. Let
the mixture stand at least twenty-four hours after it is made before it
is used.
Lay strips of pastry, notched with a jagging-iron, in a cross-bar
pattern, upon the pie, instead of a top-crust.
I take this opportunity of warning the innocent reader against placing
any confidence whatever in dried currants. I years ago gave over trying
to guess who put the dirt in them. It is always there! Gravel-stones
lurking under a specious coating of curranty-looking paste, to crucify
grown people’s nerves and children’s teeth; mould that changes to mud
in the mouth; twigs that prick the throat, not to mention the legs,
wings, and bodies of tropical insects—a curious study to one interested
in the entomology of Zante. It is all _dirt!_ although sold to us at
_currant_ prices.
Wash your currants, therefore, first in warm water, rolling up your
sleeves, and rubbing the conglomerate masses apart, as you would scrub
a muddy garment. Drain them in a cullender, and pass them through
three more waters—cold now, but cleansing. Then spread them upon a
large dish, and enter seriously upon your geological and entomological
researches. “Sultanas”—sweet and seedless—are nearly as troublesome,
but their specialty is more harmless, being stickiness and stems.
Nevertheless, since John has a weakness for mince-pies (I never saw an
un-dyspeptic man who had not), it is worth your while to make them,
having this consolation, that if you are wise you need not engage in
the manufacture oftener than once, or at most, twice a winter. But let
the children taste them sparingly, and never at night, if you value
their health and your own sound slumbers.