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delightful fish," and immediately added it to their stock of fast-day viands. The Jews, again, could not believe it was procured from that impure beast the hog, and included it in their list of clean animals.
Minced or mince-pies, form another dish of considerable antiquity, and still remain in great request, as an essential article in Christmas dinners ; and the stock of mince-meat is frequently not exhausted until Easter. It is also, I believe, customary in London to introduce them on Lord Mayor's Day (November 9th); and in a modern bill of fare for this feast (1832), there are no less than one hundred and eleven dishes of mince-pies included. This savoury article is said to have reference, in the variety of its ingredients, to the offerings of the Wise Men, and the coffin or case of them should be oblong, in imitation of the crache (rack or manger) where our Saviour was laid.
After the Restoration, these pies, with other observances of the same nature, as decorating with evergreens, &c. almost served as a test of a person's opinions; the presbyterian party looking on them as superstitious abominations. They would even refuse to eat them when in distress for a comfortable meal, as is related at first of Bunyan when in confinement. They should have eaten them with a protest, as lawyers would have done in a similar case.
Misson, in his " Travels in England," (p. 322.) in the beginning of the last century, gives the following as the ingredients of a mince-pie. Neats' tongues, chicken, eggs, sugar, currants, lemon and orange peel, with various sorts of spices. The receipts in the present day contain the same leading features, but vary a little in the minutiae. I have been told by the cognoscenti in mince-piea, that |
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