[Sca-cooks] "A minced pie" from Gervase Markham

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Hullo, the list!

Somebody asked for period mincemeat recipes; it's taken me this long 
to lay hands on Markham's "The English House-Wife", but I've used 
this recipe with some success. It's argued that its publication date 
is post-period (1615), and it is, but Markham spent the last years of 
his life being prosecuted for plagiarizing his own work (at a time 
when publishers essentially bought a book from the author, leaving 
them no further rights). It's extremely likely, although not proven 
or certain, that this dish, or something functionally identical to 
it, was cooked prior to December 31st, 1600. From that, take such 
consolation as you're inclined to ;-).

"A minced pie.

Take a leg of mutton, and cut the best of the flesh from the bone, 
and parboil it well: then put to it three pound of the best mutton 
suet, and shred it very small: then spread it abroad, and season it 
with pepper and salt, cloves and mace: then put in good store of 
currants, great raisins, and prunes clean washed and picked, a few 
dates sliced, and some orange peels sliced, then, being all well 
mixed together, put it into a coffin, or into divers coffins, and so 
bake them: and when they are served up open the lids, and strew store 
of sugar on top of the meat, and upon the lid. And in this sort you 
may also bake beef or veal: only the beef would not be parboiled, and 
the veal will ask a double quantity of suet."

		--Gervase Markham, "The English Housewife", Michael 
R. Best edition

I've always thought of this as kind of a sausage meat, with somewhere 
between 10 and 30 percent fat in total weight, and the fruit 
substituting for some of the lean muscle meat. 30 percent fat 
actually turns out to be too high, and the resulting grease is pretty 
unattractive and, in this era of central heating, both unnecessary 
and dangerous for most people.

I've done this recipe with three pounds of beef suet, shredded with 
about six pounds of lean meat (I used beef chuck -- actually, both 
the meat and the fat were coarsely "chili" ground), and an amount of 
fruit about equal to the total meat and fat. I'd have to find out how 
much meat to expect from a leg of mutton to get the actual fat 
percentage, or at least something close to it.

HTH,

Adamantius
-- 
"As long as but a hundred of us remain  alive, never will we on any 
conditions be brought under English rule.  It is in truth not for 
glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are  fighting, but for freedom 
-- for that alone, which no honest man gives  up but with life 
itself."
	-- The Declaration of Arbroath, 1320

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04