My favorite holiday pie is a mincemeat pie, and my first memories of it are having it at my grandmother’s house. We called her “Munga,” which was my first attempt at saying “grandmother.”
Munga always made a great variety of Christmas treats and stored them on her screened-in porch in Madison, Wisconsin. It was fun to leave the warm house and go to the cold porch and check out all of the pies and cookies that were laid out on two card tables just waiting to be enjoyed. I can still conjure the aromas of rum in fruitcakes, brandy in the mincemeat pie, and sugar in everything!
After Munga was no longer baking pies, my mother made mincemeat pies on several occasions. I do recall, however, seeing a jar of Borden’s Nonesuch mincemeat pie filling in a cupboard!
When it became my turn to contribute a pie to a holiday dinner, I went to the grocery store. For at least five years, I was able to walk into most grocery stores, go to the pie table in the bakery section, and find a mincemeat pie among the more popular pumpkin and apple pies. As an alternative, there might be a mincemeat pie in the frozen pie aisle. Dick’s Aunt Helen, who was the “pie queen” in the family with whom we were then celebrating holiday meals and could be counted on to bring fabulous pies to the table, once very subtly gave me a recipe for a rum sauce to drizzle over those [awful] “store-bought” mince pies……I will acknowledge that the sauce did help!
For the last few years, I have not been able to find mincemeat pies at grocery stores or even bakeries, and my mouth is watering right now to have one. So, because I have been to Pie Camp and can make a good crust, I am ready to try making an old-fashioned, “from-scratch” mincemeat filling to go in it.
I started by searching in my new pie books for a recipe that captured my memories of Munga’s pie. Interestingly, the three new books I have, all published within the last three years, do not even include a mincemeat pie recipe. I also checked in The Lost Art of Pie Making Made Easy, which is now my “go-to book” for long-forgotten pie recipes. Here, I found one recipe for enough mincemeat for 40 pies which begins “when you kill a beef, save the head for pies.” I then checked with Julia (Mastering the Art of French Cooking) but, as I knew, mince pies have their roots in England, and, when you search the index for “pie,” Mastering refers you to “pastry,” “quiche” and “tart.” Finally, I went to Joy of Cooking, (curiously, the red place-holder ribbon was on the page for mince pie, along with the recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie, which I did make!), but the recipe did not call for suet, and I knew that was the magic ingredient in mincemeat. So, as a last resort, I went to the Internet and found a recipe for what I imagined was the closest to the one Munga would have made.
People:
• Grandmothers, mothers and aunts who taught us how to cook and to enjoy good food.
• Butchers who still save beef fat as suet
Places:
• Holiday tables where families gather, reminisce, and carry generational traditions forward.
Pies:
• Mincemeat Pie. It took a bit of perseverance to find the recipe, the help of a butcher to provide the suet, and a three-day wait to let the ingredients become best friends, but the pie turned out to be as good as I remembered! I do think that Munga, Mother, and Aunt Helen would be proud. Merry Christmas!
- 1 recipe for a double-crust pie
- • 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and finely chopped
- • ⅔ cup golden raisins
- • ⅔ cup dark raisins
- • ⅔ cup dried currants
- • ½ cup packed dark brown sugar
- • 2 oz shredded beef suet (1/2 cup)
- • ¼ cup brandy
- • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- • 2 teaspoons finely grated fresh lemon zest
- • 2 teaspoons finely grated fresh orange zest
- • ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- • ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 egg, beaten, for egg wash
- sugar to sprinkle on top crust
- Make mincemeat. Blend ingredients and store in an airtight container for 3 days. Stir occasionally.
- Put a baking sheet in middle of oven and preheat oven to 400°F.
- Roll out 1 piece of dough (keep remaining piece chilled) on a lightly floured surface into a 13-inch round and fit into a 9-inch glass pie plate (4-cup capacity). Stir mincemeat, then spoon into shell. Chill pie while rolling out top.
- Roll out remaining disk into a 10-inch round on lightly floured surface. If making a lattice top, cut into 10 (1-inch-wide) strips with a fluted pastry wheel or a knife. Arrange strips in a lattice pattern on top of filling and trim strips and edge of bottom crust, leaving a ½-inch overhang. Seal edges and crimp decoratively. Brush lattice and edge with some of egg and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake until pastry is golden brown, 50 minutes to 1 hour. (If pastry rim gets too dark, tent with foil.) Cool 2 hours before serving. Pie will keep( chilled (on your back porch if you live in Madison Wisconsin!) for 4 days. Reheat at 350 degrees for 15 minutes before serving.
