English Christmas continues to be associated with mince pies, even though the recipe has changed a good deal over the centuries.  There are no shortage of recipes in the eighteenth century, but the one in verse submitted by “Miss Taste” to the first number of The Lilliputian Magazine, the first children’s periodical, seems to have been overlooked by historians of holidays and of English food ways. The issue was published in March 1752, not December 1751, which may explain why Miss Taste says nothing about Christmas.

Here it is:

A Receipt to make Mince-Pies, of such Materials as are cheap, agreeable to every Palate, and will not offend the Stomach.  Communicated by Miss Taste.

Take golden pippins pared, two pound,

                Two pounds of well-shred beef suet,

Two pounds  of raisins, chop’t and ston’d,

                And put two pounds of currants to it;

Half an ounce of cinnamon, well beat,

                Of sugar, three-fourths of a pound,

And one green lemon peel shred neat,

                So it can’t with ease be found;

Add sack or brandy, spoonfuls, three,

                And one large Seville orange squeeze;

Of sweet-meats a small quantity,

                And you’ll the nicest palate please.

Although a relatively small recipe yielding around eight pounds of mincemeat, it represents hours of work peeling the apples, seeding and chopping the dried fruit, and shredding the suet, a task the doyenne of English Christmas cookery, Elizabeth David, hated so much that she substituted ready made.  With just a cup and a half of sugar, a touch of sherry or brandy, a couple spoonfuls of cinnamon, some orange juice, and green lemon peel (a kind of Italian lemon which stays green when ripe then much appreciated), Miss Taste’s mincemeat would not have been especially sweet, alcoholic, or spicy.

Her recipe does look relatively digestible and inexpensive compared to some others circulating in steady selling cookbooks.  The “best way” Art of Cookery author Hannah Glasse recommended in 1747 called for “half a hundred apples,” a pound more suet, a full pint of liquor, mace, cloves, nutmeg, citron, and orange peel–but only half a pound of sugar. For a more hearty pie, Glasse directed that filling be laid on top of two pounds of ox tongue or beef sirloin. This variation required doubling the amount of fruit!  This surely would have produced enough for more than one baking and any extra stored in crocks.

The Compleat Housewife  (1727) by Eliza Cook contained a recipe for a much richer mixture: four pounds of meat cut off a leg of veal, nine pounds of beef suet, seven pounds of currants, four pounds of raisins, eight pippins, nutmeg, mace, cloves, grated and candied lemon peel, citron and a speck of sherry or red wine.  Martha Custis Washington’s recipe was very similar, except for the addition of rosewater.

Instructions are  terrifyingly short on details, compared to modern ones which specify yield, precise quantities of ingredients, oven temperature, and baking time and much more.  Not a word is said by the eighteenth-century ladies about the crust—they seem to assume that any cook will know that the pan should be lined with the preferred type of pastry and baked blind before filling.  Or should the cook make hand pies instead of large ones?

Of the three recipes, that of Miss Taste is certainly the most affordable, as it calls just for suet instead of pounds of suet and meat.  Why did she make such a point of promoting her way with mincemeat as “cheap?”  A clue may lie in the introductory “Dialogue between a Gentleman and the Author.”  The author points out to the gentleman that educational books “are to be made as cheap as possible; for there are a great many poor people in his majesty’s dominions, who would not be able to afford to purchase it at a larger price, and yet these are the king’s subjects, and in their station, as much to be regarded as the rest.”   Would the inclusion of a grander recipe for mincemeat of the sort circulating at the time been regarded as excluding a certain class of reader, which was a natural constituent for it?  Certainly John Newbery  expressed more faith in social advancement through merit rather than birth, so perhaps it was no idle sentiment…