Very interesting. Do you have a favorite recipe?

Interesting site. Nothing like Grandmas. She would have only used what was available to her in her own location and probably just from the farm.

I have come up with something similar and am letting it age. I think it tastes super. I won't bake with it for a couple of weeks.

Glenda - here's the other mincemeat recipe from my grandmother's friend's mother. The quantities are large so I assume it's a canning recipe.

5 lbs beef cooked and ground
2 lbs apples
2 lbs raisins
2 lbs currants
1/2 lb citron
1 qt. boiled-down vinegar
25¢ brown sugar

Add a little vinegar and white sugar to taste. Add cinnamon, nutmeg and bits of jelly to taste.

I'm not sure how big a 25 cent brown sugar would've been, and I don't know what citron is. I wonder if it's hard to find.

There seems to be a lot of different mincemeat recipes. Do you think this was a way to use up meat when it was difficult to keep it refrigerated/frozen?

I will have to check out that book and the plum pudding recipe.

so far i have a friend trying to help me. she suggested i use a crock pot with water in it and water up to 2/3 of the the mold. now i am working on getting a mold.

christie, my grandmother and mother used the meat from the hog's head....never had beef because they had no refrigeration back then (Mom did, but not grandma). Nothing was wasted. The took out the eyes, cut off the ears (those were scrubbed and used too), cut off snout and boiled the whole head (minus the brains of course). When cool, took off all the meat bits and pieces with some fat too. This is what they used for mincemeat and souse.

Citron is a citrus fruit and most Ozarkians would never have had that.

I made up my own recipe using what I had in the pantry...no meat!. I used dark and golden raisins, candied cherries, frozen Red Haven peaches that had turned very dark, apples peeled and cored, sugar, boiled down apple cider, my hard cider, minced candied orange peel and the flesh only of the oranges. I ran all through the KA grinder and let it age for several days on the porch.....then cooked it down for 20 minutes and it is now aging in the fridge. I think it tastes like Mom's and Grandma's did....the real test will be my cooking expert sister when she tastes it!

I have a half gallon of it. I even enjoy it on toast.

I have copied your family recipe and put it in my Mincemeat File. I now have about 6 different recipes, most calling for meat....except the green tomato one. I will try that next summer. Thanks for taking the time to look it up and post it for me. Yours is a simpler recipe than most; calling for less ingredients.

Glenda

True "citron" is a citrus fruit, but they could have meant "citron melon", it's a small watermelon-like fruit.

Thanks rockguy.
I don't know the science of canning but if Citron was an important ingredient and it was common to make mincemeat, perhaps it was something a person could buy at a general store back then.
I saw something about "how to boil a calf's head" in the index of that cookbook. We're spoiled nowadays aren't we. I'm sure that part is used at processing plants for dogfood and such, but we never have to deal with it ourselves.
Violet I didn't mean to ignore your question about my favorite recipe. I have some picky eaters in my family. It's really hard to find something that everyone likes. My son said he wanted chicken with biscuits for Thanksgiving instead of turkey and everyone agreed. That's definitely one of their favorites. I use the Allrecipes chicken pot pie recipe below, but drop globs of bisquick biscuits on top instead of putting it into a pie crust and I double the gravy. I use the Allrecipes website a LOT. You can sort by rating which is sooo helpful. This one has five stars and over 2500 reviews. There are at least a couple Allrecipes cookbooks out with favorites in them. That's how I discovered the website. There was a book in our dentist's office.

Here is a link that might be useful: Allrecipes.com - Chicken Pot Pie IX

i finally found a plum pudding recipe that i like that calls for candied orange and lemon peel, apples and apricots. i couldn't find the lemon or orange peel in the stores, too late. i want fresh apricots. will wait until next year to make one. will freeze my own apricot and make my own candied orange and lemon peel. a friend gave me some enameled tin pans. not sure what the metal is, but they would make great molds.