Holiday foods admin 5 years agoNovember 17, 2021

Holiday Treats #12, Mince Meat from the 1920’s

Holiday Treats #12

Casper Wyoming 1900 through 1920’s

Mince Meat

4# lean meat chopped fine

3# suet, 8# apples chopped fine

2# currants, 2# raisins, 1# citron

6# brown sugar, 1pt. Molasses

1 lemon chopped fine

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon allspice

½ tablespoon cloves

2 tablespoons salt

Wet with qt. cider or vinegar

Cook

Vinegar, any kind of fruit juice with water & sugar added. Soak dried apples 3 or 4 days; then add one pt. sugar to a gallon of juice.

Mince Meat (#2) Mrs. BTM

2 lbs. raw beef minced fine

1 lb. suet

1 lb. raisins

1 lb. currants

1 doz. Good sized winter apples

4# brown sugar

1 ½ cups cider vinegar

2 cups fruit juice, pickle syrup or water

1 nutmeg ground

4 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon cloves

¼ lb. lemon peel chopped

Mix together and boil slowly ½ hour, all but ½ sugar (?) is then added & boiled 2 ½ hours.

Cedar Rapids Iowa 1914 through 1958

Mince Meat Radio Recipe

5 cups cooked ground beef

2 cups ground suet

7 ½ cups chopped apples

3 cups cider ½ cup molasses

½ cup vinegar 5 cups sugar

¾ lb. citron cut up

2 ½ lb. whole raisins

1 ½ lb. chopped raisins

Salt to taste

2 tabsp. Nutmeg

2 tabsp. Lemon extract

1 tsp. almond extract

1 tabsp. Mace

2 tabsp. Each – cinnamon – allspice – cloves

Juice of 2 lemons & oranges

3 cup meat broth

Combine – cook 1 ½ hours; can for future use.

Suet – It is the hard, raw fat from beef or mutton found around the kidneys and loins. The high smoke point and fast melting temperature makes it perfect for deep frying and pastry making. After rendering into tallow, it is used in cooking and baking such things as the traditional English Christmas pudding. The long process of rendering it down to tallow, involves melting and simmering several times, cooling it down all to refine the suet to a usable state. Suet requires refrigeration if it to be stored for any length of time.

Do not confuse suet with all fat from the animals it can only be found around the heart and kidneys of cattle and sheep. Nor should it be confused with drippings, which is the melted fats in the pan when cooking the meat.

Pre-packaged suet that can be found today in the markets is mixed with flour and dehydrated to make it stable at room temperature. Some care is needed to use this for the old recipes, the proportions of flour to fat will alter the stated recipe. Fresh suet can be bought in markets and must be coarsely grated to use; then must be refrigerated prior to use and used within a few days of buying it.

Easy Mincemeat

1 c. hamburger – 1 c water boil until done – 1 tsp. slt

Sugar 1 cup

3 c. chopped apples

1 tabsp. Cinnamon – 1 tsp. cloves

1 c. vinegar

1 orange – 1 lemon – ground

1 c. raisins chopped – ¼ c. corn syrup

Cook 40 minutes – real