VERY FINE MINCE-MEAT.--Boil two beef's tongues, (perfectly fresh,) and, when cold, skin and mince them; including the fat about the roots. Mince, also, one pound of beef-suet, and mix it with the chopped tongues. Add four nutmegs powdered; two ounces of powdered cinnamon; and an ounce of powdered mace, with a table-spoonful of powdered cloves. Pick clean, wash, and dry three pounds of Zante currants. Seed and chop three pounds of the _best_ raisins. Mix the fruit with the other ingredients, adding a pound of citron sliced, and the grated yellow rind, and the juice of three large lemons or oranges. Sweeten the mixture with two pounds of sugar, and moisten it with a quart of excellent 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. Seed and chop two pounds of the best raisins. Sultana raisins have no seeds, and are therefore the most convenient for all cookery purposes. Grate the yellow rind of three large lemons or oranges into a saucer, and squeeze upon it their juice, through a strainer. Mix this with the currants and raisins. Prepare a heaped-up table-spoonful of powdered cinnamon; the same quantity of powdered ginger; a heaped tea-spoonful of powdered nutmeg; the same of powdered cloves; and the same of powdered mace. Mix all these spices into a quart of the best _West India_ molasses. Then mix well together the meat and the fruit; and wet the whole with the spiced molasses; of which you must have enough to make the mixture very moist, but not too thin. If you want the mince-meat for immediate use, add to it four pounds of minced apple. The apples for this purpose should be pippins or bell-flowers, pared, cored, quartered, and chopped fine. Add, also, half a pound of citron, not minced, but cut into long slips.