Victorian Mincemeat With Actual Meat

[chicar]

Like In The Old Days:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRH5DODIgE0

[madamemarigold]

My mother always made a chocolate mincemeat for every holiday meal.  I just could not even fathom it. I stuck to the many other pies and more suitable arraignments she would make other than that one!  shudders

[Synistor 303]

My mother always made a chocolate mincemeat for every holiday meal.  I just could not even fathom it. I stuck to the many other pies and more suitable arraignments she would make other than that one!  shudders

I dunno - I made a Mexican chocolate chicken dish once, and it was outstanding! I think pumpkin pie is the food that gives us the shudders...

[Lazaras]

While not... .exactly victorian it's close enough  I Suppose. Besides I love townsend's material.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrulF6z-1Mw

Postscript: Here is another mince pie (with actual meat!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRH5DODIgE0

[madamemarigold]

Mom's mincemeat came in a box similar to a raisin box? But bigger! (Lot bigger) And if I remember it right it was actual meat! And if you try properly made pumpkin pie it is perfection~ Just the right amount of spices and whipped topping... it is scrumptious. 

[Hurricane Annie]

Isn't  mince meat and fruit a medieval culinary  taste brought back from the Crusades or some other exotic land. One would think the Victorian mores would disapprove of such fancies

{don't put grated carrot in fruit mince.}

[J. Wilhelm]

My mother always made a chocolate mincemeat for every holiday meal.   I just could not even fathom it. I stuck to the many other pies and more suitable arraignments she would make other than that one!  shudders

I dunno - I made a Mexican chocolate chicken dish once, and it was outstanding! I think pumpkin pie is the food that gives us the shudders...

I believe (actually I'm sure) that Synistor is referring to Mole sauce. Indeed chocolate is a good compliment to savoury foods. Cocoa comes from Native Mesoamerica, and it's original form was part of the preparation of a few Aztec "Moles" (Native sauces). When the Spanish came, they brought sugar cane from Africa and thus cocoa became chocolate.

The modern chocolate mole is known as "Mole Poblano" (Mole from Puebla) and it incorporates toasted and ground pumpkin seeds, nuts and spices including hot Chile peppers. It has garlic, onion and even tomatoes. The taste is semi sweet but savoury at the same time. At home, you can confirm that a few grains of course salt compliment chocolate very well, so that's the key to understanding the flavour of Mole.

Mole poblano is most similar in consistency and preparation to Indian Curry, with the sauce being a meal into itself. Mole also precedes Indian Curry, because Chile peppers also came from the Americas. Original preparation involves a day long process to toast, grind and boil the ingredients. As time went by people learned to dehydrate the sauce into an oily powder or paste you can still buy by weight today at local markets. The most modern way to find Mole is as paste in a jar, again very similar to Indian Curry. The most commercialized brand in Mexico, "Mole Doña María" was owned by Nestlé over many years. It's available in the UK and the Antipodes as an import (I found out), and it's present in regular non- ethnic supermarkets in various parts of the United States. Most Mexican restaurants should know about it.

The Aztec version of (any type of) Mole would be a sauce usually placed over turkey, deer or rabbit meat, as those were the only available game before the Spanish brought beef and pork. Today it's served usually over chicken and turkey, but in truth you can place it over any meat or anything you like.

Chile peppers were and are considered to be food preservatives. In fact the Texan (American) dish "Chile con Carne" ( Chile with Meat"), nowadays known as "Chili," was prepared from dehydrated blocks of a highly concentrated stew of Chile peppers and minced or shredded dry beef. During the cattle drives from Texas to Northern States, cowboys would take the dehydrated blocks as a way to reconstitute the Chili into the stew.

So, if you were to make a Mole Poblano mince meat pie, I think it would most likely work out well by allowing the Mole+ meat mix to dehydrate as it cools down. Similar to Chili con Carne, I would use a safely cured meat, like dry beef, or bacon, or perhaps better, Chorizo (dried and cured version) sausage. Use a pie crust, or if you wanted it to be more Native than a pastry shell, you can steam or bake it into a "Tamal" corn cake, and I can see that as a viable minced meat pie. Tamales were in facts popular portable foods for the Aztec, not far away from a meat pie. But corn cakes are not a good preservative, and not a pie. They wheat based pastry shell would be far more stable.