Page:The Lady's Receipt-book.djvu/144

138 brandy, and a quart of sherry or Madeira wine. Having thoroughly mixed the whole, pack it down, hard, into small stone jars, covering them closely, and pasting strong white paper over the lids. Do not add the apples till you take out the mince-meat for use, as it keeps better without them. Then take a sufficient number of pippins or bell-flowers, pare, core and chop them, and mix them with the mince-meat, .allowing three large apples to a pint of mince-meat. Their freshness will improve the flavour.

It is best to make mince-meat two or three times during the winter; as it will not continue very good longer than five or six weeks. Whenever you take any out of the jars, put some additional brandy to the remainder.

For mince-meat, and all other purposes, use none but the best raisins. What are called cooking raisins, (like cooking butter and cooking wine,) injure instead of improving the articles with which they are mixed. All things of bad quality are unwholesome as well as unpalatable. It is better to do without mince-pies, plum-puddings and plum-cakes, than to spoil them with hard, dried up, indigestible raisins; to say nothing of the trouble of stoning and stemming them, when they are nearly all seeds and stems.

TEMPERANCE MINCE-MEAT.—Take three pounds of the lean of a round of fresh beef, that has been boiled the day before. It must be thoroughly boiled, and very tender. Mince it, as finely as possible, with a chopping-knife; and add to it two pounds of beef-suet, cleared from the skin and filaments, and minced very small. Mix the suet and the lean beef well together; and add a pound of brown sugar. Pick, wash, and dry before the fire, two pounds of Zante currants.