[Sca-cooks] period mincemeat...

[Elaine Koogler]

Kathleen A Roberts wrote:

> anyone have a recipe?  preferably without citron (personal dislike, 
> YMMV).
>
> i do an erzats modern one with beef, suet, raisins, fresh anddried 
> apples, sweet spices, honey, red wine, orange peel and some whisky. 
> might this be close?
>
> cailte
>
I seem to recall searching for a period mincemeat recipe some years back 
with a notable lack of success.  I just went to a couple of sources and 
found the following:

 From the Harleian Manuscript, #279, cited in  Lorna Sass'  "Christmas 
Feasts":  She indicates that this is probably the predecessor of the 
more modern mincemeat pie:

Take butys of Vele, & mynce  hem smal, or  Porke, & put on a potte; take 
Wyne, & caste thereto pouder of Gyngere, Pepir, & Safroun & Salt, & a 
lytle verthous [verjuice], & do hem in a cofyn [pie crust] with yolkys 
of Eyroun [eggs], & kutte Datys & Roysonys of Couraunce [currants], 
Cloyws, Maces, & then ceuere thin cofyn & lat it bake tyl it be y-now 
[done].

There are three "minced pye" recipes in Kenelm Digby (1669), "My Lady of 
Portland's Minced Pyes", "Another way of making excellent Minced Pyes of 
my Lady Portlands" and "Minced Pyes", which is from Lady Lasson.  All 
three of these contain citron, so I have not entered them here.  You 
might want to check out a copy of the book and look at them for 
yourself.  They all look very good.  And I suspect you could probably 
omit the citron, though many would argue that it would no longer be a 
period recipe....but we don't want to get into that argument at this 
point.  These all are what we know as minced meat...containing most, if 
not all, of the traditional ingredients.

Kiri