Grannie Messenger’s Mincemeat

Family Christmas’s always meant home made mincemeat and stirring to make a wish. The great day was 23rd October for both the pudding and the mincemeat. This is my grandmother’s recipe and possibly her mother and grandmother’s before her. As the luxury mincemeats now include cherries, that is an optional extra that I have indulged in.

My grandmother started with 7lbs of apples… she had seven children. When I was a child the jars were kept in the cellar until as late as Easter. I have scaled the recipe down to a manageable quantity that will be consumed before the New Year.

Grannie Messenger’s Mincemeat

• 1 ½lb apples
• ½lb raisins
• ½lb currants
• 5 oz mixed peel
• 2 oz blanched almond slices
• 6 oz suet
• pinch of powdered cloves, ginger and grated nutmeg and mace
• 2 pinches of powdered cinnamon
• 1 coffee spoon of salt
• 2 oz brandy

Peel and chop the apples to about the same size as the raisins. Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge overnight to macerate.

Stir, wish and put into sterilised jam jars. You can use it after about three weeks of maturing. This recipe has no sugar which is great preserving ingredient, and the fruit has not been sterilised by cooking. If the apples are very juicy the mincemeat may start to ferment if it is not used relatively quickly so if you are short of cool storage space half my recipe again.

Fermenting was never an issue when we were children.

Hungry for more? Try these!

1. Baked red cabbage
2. Mince pies
3. Butterscotch Apple Meringue
4. Chicken Pasanda