American Pie : Mincemeat: Chopping for a Pie

This year, according to the unwritten rules of preplanned potluck Thanksgiving dinners, it fell upon me to provide the mincemeat pie. My only experience with this savory curiosity came when I was 4 and shattered a quart jar of homemade mincemeat on the sidewalk outside my grandfather’s house, an accident that came as a great relief to the entire clan.

My grandfather’s neighbor, Tom Aspen, had provided the venison mincemeat as a holiday gift, something of an annual event. Aspen ranks high in my mother’s childhood pantheon of war criminals for the Christmas morning he appeared at the back door holding her stiff pet cat by the tail. “I killed your cat,” he told her father. “Had to try out my new scope.” According to my mother, Aspen’s mincemeat was always cloyingly sweet and gamey-flavored, a strain on neighborly politesse.

Mincemeat pie in my family has always served as a vehicle to deliver hard sauce to my father’s mouth. He is quite the expert on the making of hard sauce. But there is no equivalent mincemeat-making tradition in my family to draw upon. My parents have always relied on the supermarket. My father favors Borden’s all-fruit mincemeat over the Crosse & Blackwell version, a preference he defends as a matter of taste.

I probably would have opted for a supermarket name-brand mincemeat had not Susan Vanderbeek appeared at my door on a recent morning bearing fresh-baked mincemeat-stuffed cookies. She had the tradition, and the recipe. Susan is a Pacific Northwest chef of long standing, both in Portland and Seattle. She is happiest working in a restaurant where sitting down to eat is much like arriving at a good friend’s home--the friend in this case being a skilled cook of unerring, simple, rustic instinct.

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The recipe comes from Ida Kuratli who, if she were alive today, would probably be somewhere in her early 100s. Susan spent part of her childhood in Hillsboro, Ore., a Swiss-populated farming community outside Portland that is now a suburb. She remembers attending Thanksgiving dinners where the only item on the table not provided by the farm was the bowl of olives. She remembers the church basement potlucks with delicious items such as dried pear bread served with homemade Swiss cheese. But most of all, she remembers Kuratli’s mincemeat.

To this day, Susan and her mother make and pressure-can mincemeat, relying on the venison that inevitably appears in their household each fall. The mincemeat she stuffed into oatmeal cookies was a year old. She assured me, however, that I could make mincemeat one day and the pie the next and the results would be perfectly delicious. Aging simply allows mincemeat to mellow, giving the flavors the opportunity to soften and blend and seek a subtle complexity.

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I had always thought of mincemeat as an ancient means of preserving scraps of game or beef. Having now made it, using lean beef instead of venison, I see it as a means of preserving apples in a dark, savory context. Compared to all the fruit and fruit juices that go into mincemeat, the amount of meat, suet and stock added to the pot is all but insignificant. Its contribution is an underlying richness and sheen.

When I suggested to my friends and associates that I had made enough mincemeat to share, a certain wavering enthusiasm came over a majority of them. Lots of nods and shuffling of feet and cleared throats and weak smiles and thin excuses. Tom Aspen, it seems, is something of an archetype, the universal neighbor bearing suspect jars of mincemeat. I can only guess that there must be a lot of bad recipes out there, and mincemeat carries the rap.

I delivered my test pie, one slice missing, to an office filled with hard-hearted mutterers and ingrates. Decliners of a pie-making opportunity each and every one. There wasn’t a scrap of crust left remaining by noon.

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Since we all have different ideas of what is and is not too sweet, I started with half the required sugar and only added the remainder toward the end of the cooking process, when I was satisfied that adding more wouldn’t be too much. Let your own taste be your guide.

IDA KURATLI’S MINCEMEAT

1 quart boiling water

1 1/2 pounds lean beef such as round steak or venison, trimmed of fat and cut into 1-inch cubes

1 pint cider

1 pint grape juice

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves

1 1/2 teaspoons mace

Grated zest 1 orange

1/2 cup orange juice

3 quarts peeled and finely chopped apples, such as Granny Smiths (about 5 extra-large)

1/4 pound finely chopped citron

1 1/2 pounds raisins

1/2 pound currants

1/2 pound ground suet

1 cup light molasses

1 1/2 tablespoons salt

1 pound brown sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice, or to taste

1 cup brandy, or to taste

First pour boiling water over cubed meat in large pot, then simmer, covered, until tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Starting with boiling water keeps juices inside meat. Drain, reserving 1 cup stock. Mince meat. Let cool.

Place meat, reserved stock, cider, grape juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace, orange zest, orange juice, apples, citron, raisins, currants, suet, molasses, salt and brown sugar in large, heavy-bottomed pot. Cook at low simmer 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Mincemeat should be thick but not dry. Remove from heat and add lemon juice and brandy to taste. Cover and chill in refrigerator overnight to allow flavors to blend. Makes 15 1/2 cups.

Each cup of mincemeat contains about:

619 calories; 863 mg sodium; 35 mg cholesterol; 21 grams fat; 97 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams protein; 1.56 grams fiber.

Note: According to “Putting Food By,” canning mincemeat requires pressure canning. A hot water bath will not do. Ladle hot mincemeat into hot pint canning jars, allowing 1/2 inch head room, and process at 10 pounds pressure (240F/116C) 20 minutes.

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Mincemeat Pie:

To bake 9-inch mincemeat pie use 2 1/2 cups mincemeat and 2 1/2 cups peeled, chopped apples. Bake in prepared pie crust with prepared top crust at 375 degrees 30 to 40 minutes.