Brand of mincemeat recommendation

Evidently making mincemeat is a rather labor and ingredient-intensive occupation. I'd be okay with that if I wasn't already baking 1,963,074 different kinds of cookies, plus the fruitcakes I made* and who knows what else. Pie and Pastry Bible suggested a brand called Postilion, evidently some French restaurant in Wisconsin, but so far as I can tell it is no more (the brand of packaged goods anyway), the brand has been bought by East Shore but doesn't look like they make mincemeat any more, so so much for that, anyone have any other brilliant ideas?

* Two of them went to my kids' school holiday fair, where they probably didn't get sold and were given to the food pantry next door, where even the winos probably turn up their nose at fruitcake, at least they're unlikely to go to the trouble of soaking the cheesecloth in brandy... bah, humbug.

Hi,

I don't particularly like mincement.

A few years ago, post-Christmas I bought a few boxes of None Such marked down considerably. They sat on my shelf until last year, when I needed to make dozens of cookies for a Christmas bake sale. I used the None Such mincemeat cookie recipe on the box. They were pretty good cookies and the bits of the mincemeat I tasted was ok (remember from someone who isn't a mincemeat fan).

Mike,

Try Irish or British import stores or groceries. Two brands you might see are Crosse & Blackwell and Robertsons. I seem to recall you live in Roscoe Village, so the closest place to you w/b Tara Imports on Southport (not sure of exact address--certainly between Roscoe and Irving.)

Tara is on Southport one block S of Addison on the SE corner.

Hi,

On Saturday, I saw Crosse & Blackwell products on a display at Jewel. I did not see mincemeat, though I imagine their product is represented wherever they do keep it.

Regards,

Thought I'd report back on the mincemeat pie.

Part of the point of making this pie was to see if a stronger, meatier flavor would disguise the slight porkiness of a leaf lard crust better than summertime fillings like blueberry or cherry. So Thuesday I strolled over to Paulina to get some stew meat, I pulled a number and it said 02, I looked up at the board... they had just called 44. There were 58 people ahead of me. Since I wasn't cooking a big roast (we were invited over), it seemed crazy to wait two hours for a little fistful of low-grade meat, so I decided I'd get the meat the next day at Whole Foods when I bought assorted other ingredients.

Long story short: similar situation at Whole Foods. I would be making a vegetarian mincemeat pie with, ironically, a non-vegetarian crust.

As far as the filling went, my mom suggested that the way she makes mincemeat is to start with a little block of Nonesuch mincemeat base, about $2 at a normal grocery store, and then build it up with apple, orange, raisin, currants, extra spices, bourbon, etc. Even though much of it is scratch-made by the end, she thinks it comes out better starting with somebody else's professional mincemeat and all its flavors. When I got to the point of only needing that one item from Jewel, however, I decided to see what Whole Foods might offer rather than walking another four blocks for one thing. They had exactly one brand of mincemeat in a jar-- Rosebud Farms, Yorkshire, England, Almond-Orange Mincemeat for... a very modest $8.99 a jar.

I quickly weighed the opportunity cost of this purchase and decided Adam Smith would say it was too cold to walk, screw it. (I thought of all the money I was already saving by substituting $5/fifth Applejack for $25/tiny bottle Calvados in Silver Palate's Pate Maison.) So: I built up a rich, decidedly orangey mincemeat from this princely stuff, and... it was really, really good, and successfully masked the tacos al pastor hint in the pie crust. Mission accomplished, quite successfully.