Mincemeat Nut Bread Recipe, Whats Cooking Aamerica (2024)

FAQs

Why is mincemeat so expensive? ›

Mincemeat isn't difficult to make, but it has a lot of ingredients, which can make it expensive to produce in small batches, and it requires at least a day's advance planning to let the ingredients sit.

Mincemeat is a combination of chopped dried fruits, spices, sugar, nuts, distilled spirits, a fat of some type and sometimes meat. The name is a carryover from 15th century England when mincemeat did indeed have meat in the mix; in fact, the whole point of mincemeat was to preserve meat with sugar and alcohol.

Versions containing animal fats should be cooked before use but those including butter can be used as they are, perhaps stirred into an ice cream mixture. You could even serve an especially tasty version with whipped or clotted cream as a sumptuous festive topping for warm scones.

The "mince" in mincemeat comes from the Middle English mincen, and the Old French mincier both traceable to the Vulgar Latin minutiare, meaning chop finely. The word mincemeat is an adaptation of an earlier term minced meat, meaning finely chopped meat. Meat was also a term for food in general, not only animal flesh.

Mincemeat is essentially a mixture of chopped dried fruits, distilled spirits, a combination of spices, beef suet, and (traditionally) chopped meat which is usually used as a pie or pastry filling.

Mince pies have been eaten as part of a traditional British Christmas since at least the 16th century. Then they were made of a spiced, sweet minced meat mixture (often lamb), but they are now commonly made with sweet mincemeat, a mixture of dried fruits, sugar, spices, and brandy.

It is not the same as mincemeat, which is a mixture of chopped dried fruit, distilled spirits, spices and historically (but present day rare) minced/ground meat.

By the 18th century it was more likely to be tongue or even tripe, and in the 19th century it was minced beef. It was not until the late Victorian period and early 20th Century that mince pies dropped the meat and had all fruit fillings (albeit with suet). Even today there are traditions associated with mince pies.

Traditions, folklore and superstitions

Stirring the mincemeat was quite an event, and English tradition dictates that it should only be stirred clockwise. Stirring the mincemeat anti-clockwise would lead to bad luck and poor fortune in the coming 12 months.

Is mincemeat OK to eat when Brown? ›

The colour change in mince does not mean that the meat is old or stale. The minced meat remains safe to eat as long as it has been correctly refrigerated and consumed by the use-by date on the package.

Tip: If you want to jazz up your jar of shop bought mincemeat, why not try adding the zest of a lemon & orange!

The word mincemeat is an adaptation of an earlier term "minced meat," meaning finely chopped meat.

Commonly acceptable fruits included dried fruit, chopped apples, citrus peel, currants, citron, candied fruits, brandy, rum or another liqueur. Suet – which is kidney fat – was sometimes included and occasionally still is.

Dried fruit.

The staple of Christmas vegan mincemeat! You can use any type of dried fruit you like but I would recommend at least using some raisins or currants for a traditional flavour. I used a mix of dried cranberries, raisins and sultanas.

None Such Mincemeat has seasonal distribution throughout the United States. If you cannot find None Such Mincemeat in your grocery store, please notify the store manager.

Not only is mince an incredibly versatile meat, it is also packed full of nutrients that can help support good health and wellbeing. With mince, you don't need to eat a lot of it to get the nutritional goodness.

The reason mincemeat is called meat is because that's exactly what it used to be: most often mutton, but also beef, rabbit, pork or game. Mince pies were first served in the early middle ages, and the pies were quite sizeable, filled with a mixture of finely minced meat, chopped up fruit and a preserving liquid.

The body chosen for Operation Mincemeat was that of a homeless man named Glyndwr Michael. Almost everything the movie says about him is true, like the fact that he was buried in Spain as "William Martin," and only in 1996 was his role in Operation Mincemeat revealed and subsequently acknowledged on his tombstone.