Title: 21 None Such Mince Meat Recipes
Author: Borden Company
Publisher: Borden Company
Date: 1952
ISBN: none
Length: 32 pages counting the covers (they did)
Illustrations: full-color, black-and-white, or line drawings on almost every page
Quote: “Here are recipes for pies, desserts, muffins, cakes, bread, cookies, rolls and meat sauce…but each one…made with None Such Mince Meat!”
Mincemeat was an old English tradition. It was made by mincing dried beef and dried fruit together with enough sugar and spice that the whole thing tasted more like some exotic reconstituted fruit, when cooked, than like a savory meat dish. That was the kind of thing that was trendy in the sixteenth century, when the first English colonists came to the future United States, and in the colonies and early States it remained trendy. I don’t know whether anyone still eats it now, though, except as an historical curiosity. I last saw cans of mincemeat in a supermarket that specialized in having lots of unusual items, in the Reagan Administration.
If you do use mincemeat, here are recipes. I’ve never tried any of them but, since they all rely on reconstituting the dried ingredients, I’d guess that a mix of about half dried apples, half other dried fruit (possibly including candied ginger), and your favorite sweet spices would work. Soak to soften as necessary, and sweeten judiciously, considering that dried fruit does so much to sweeten bread.
Anyway, for the cookbook collectors, here is a cookbook with a terrific lost-in-the-1950s look, and my copy is in fairly good condition.
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