Meatless Mincemeat, Demystified at Last

To make mincemeat out of one's adversary is to essentially annihilate him. This rather passe expression has culinary roots. Mincemeat, now usually meatless, is essentially an annihilation of apples, raisins, spices and a few other ingredients in which none is easily distinguished, and the whole is something far greater than the sum of its parts.

In this country, mincemeat enthusiasts are as rare as a good mincemeat pie: it's a vicious cycle. Many consider mincemeat cloyingly sweet or overly rich, which it very well may be, served as a cold, thick wedge with ice cream. Mincemeat pie is at its best warm and in the shape of the neat little hand-held, star-topped individual pies favored by the English.

My boyfriend insists on drowning his in a puddle of cream, which I admit is not a bad way to go. I prefer mine plain, ideally accompanied by a cup of tea. I was first introduced to mincemeat last Christmas, when he brought over a bag of the star-topped treats from a renowned London bakery. The mincemeat assumed a molten quality when heated in the toaster oven the next morning for breakfast.

I had been skeptical of the pies, assuming they were cousins of the Jamaican meat patty, of which I am not a fan. Upon tasting one, however, I found its meatless meatiness intriguing. The steam rising from my first pie mirrored the smoke rising from the chimneys I glimpsed through the lacy frost patterns on my window. Mincemeat is utterly warming; it tastes cozy.

Although mincemeat was originally conceived as an alternative to smoking or drying meat as a means of preservation, the star ingredient, meat, has been dropped from most modern recipes. Traditional mincemeat pies, however, still call for suet-raw beef fat taken from around the kidneys, which seems both arcane and utterly unhealthy. This meat element lends the pies a uniquely savory note, however, which butter simply cannot replicate. Unfortunately, fresh suet, much like the traditional butcher shops where one would purchase it in England, is exceedingly hard to come by on this side of the pond. The few dedicated souls willing to take a day trip to Lancaster, Penn.-the heart of Amish country-may have an easier time finding the real stuff.

There is something satisfyingly Dickensian about mincemeat pie, which unlike Christmas pudding or the dreaded fruit cake, defies its dodgy reputation. Whether mincemeat will ever threaten the presence of apple or even pecan pie on the American holiday table remains to be seen. However, the vegetarian recipe on page B3 might just exceed your not-so-great expectations.