Unknown / Dessert
Mincemeat
Mincemeat is a mixture of spiced chopped fruits. Traditionally mincemeat has contained meat, although many modern recipes omit it. This recipe, however, does contain beef. Mincemeat will stay good for a while. After all, the Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors had no freezers or refrigerators. Look at the ingredients: spices, sugar, vinegar—a cool storm cellar was good enough, ‘specially if you made a heap of it and put it in one of those many-gallon, stoneware crocks to age. Anyway, by spring when the weather turned warm, the mincemeat would be gone. Those hungry midwestern farmer ancestors who passed this recipe down the generations wouldn’t have left a scrap to spoil.
Ingredients
- Baldwin apples, Baldwin variety6–8 lb
- stew beef, stewing cuts: neck, plate, etc.; unit missing in source3
- lemon, whole; seeds removed1
- seedless black raisins, seedless black2 cup
- sugar4 cup
- ground cinnamon2 1/2 tsp
- ground nutmeg1/2 tsp
- ground cloves1/2 tsp
- dried coffee, dried; regular or decaffeinated1 tbsp
- salt1 tsp
- cider vinegar1 cup
- meat stock1 1/2 cup
- sorghum molasses or molasses, sorghum molasses or regular molasses1 1/2 cup
- ground black pepper1/2 tsp
Quantities are auto-calculated from the original recipe as a guide. Items without numbers (e.g. “to taste”) are not changed.
Method 11 steps
Core apples; remove the seeds, but don’t peel.
Cube meat and cover with water. Simmer until tender; this may take up to an hour.
Remove meat and cook the stock down to the amount needed, or thicken slightly with cornstarch.
Run meat through a food mill (medium or coarse blade), or grind to an equivalent fineness in a food processor.
Cut lemon in half and remove seeds. Purée the whole lemon in a blender, rind and all, with some of the liquid ingredients, or process as finely as possible in a food processor.
Grind the apples (or process using a coarse blade—but not too fine).
Combine the apple, meat, and raisins in a large, heavy-bottomed pot.
Add the sugar, spices, liquids, and lemon purée to the meat and apples. Use hot meat stock to rinse the last of the molasses into the mixture. Stir thoroughly.
Cook slowly, uncovered, stirring often to prevent burning until the mixture is pasteurized and enough of the liquids have evaporated to produce the texture and thickness you want in the finished mixture.
Let cool, then stir in the ground pepper.
Refrigerate, allowing the spices to mellow for several weeks.