Mince Meat Pies

Mince Meat Pies

Have you ever wondered why there is no meat in a mince meat pie? Let me enlighten you.

It was not always so.

Once upon a time, minces proliferated, that means there were lots and lots of them in the forests across North America. Didn’t make any difference whether you were in the woods in Maine, the Redwood Forests of California, or the cypress swamps of Louisiana. If you stood still for ten or fifteen minutes, you were sure to hear mince talking to each other with their almost birdlike chiruping sounds. They were dang friendly, too, which contributed to their downfall. That and the fact that they were harvested as food because they tasted better than bacon or fried chicken. And that's saying something.

They looked like a cross between a dachshund and an armadillo, long and low to the ground, with ridged skin that sort of suggested an armadillo shell, but wasn’t. Their heads , though, were more like a hedgehog than like a dog or armadillo. They had really short legs on a long body, so they couldn’t move fast, even if they wanted to, which they mostly didn’t want to do. They just sort of sat there waiting to be picked.

And they were plentiful, so plentiful that if kinfolk unexpectedly showed up right before dinner, you could send the kids out to find a couple of minces to add to the skillet, and they wouldn’t be gone mor’en thirty minutes or so. Then they’d come back with a couple of minces in a burlap bag. In a jiffy those suckers would be all fried up and on the table. There were so many of them that nobody ever bothered to raise any like they did chickens and turkeys.

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One of the favorite ways to cook and eat minces was to put them in meat pies. You know, like we now use chicken in chicken pot pies. I doubt there was a freezer in America that didn’t have some frozen mince meat pies laid away.

And then the really great worldwide depression happened. Banks folded, people lost their jobs, people spent what money they had and didn’t have any way to get any more, and many had to live off the land. In the cities there were food lines all around the block just waiting for their turn to get some food for themselves and their families. And just like people pick the lowest fruit, the easiest source of meat was the mince.

The problem was that with so many people harvesting the minthey were eating the mince faster than they could multiply. Consequently, week by week the mince got scarcer and scarcer, until one day they were all gone, nary a one to be found, no matter how hard they looked. The mince had become extinct and gone the way of the dodo bird and the carrier pigeon. There just wasn’t any any more.

“Then why do we have mince meat pies?”, you may ask.

Well, that’s just human nature. Once we glom onto something, we don’t like to let it go. You’ve heard of Waldorf salad, I can assure you there is not a bit of Waldorf in that salad. And what about Peking Duck, that duck not only doesn’t have any Peking in it, it was probably raised on a farm in Maryland and never even been close to Peking. Same thing with mince meat pie. It’s just a hangover from back when everybody was eating mince in their pot pies.

So, the next time you are served mince pie, stop for a moment to reflect on the minces that used to be and how it came to pass that there are no more minces, and what might have been done to save them.

And you might wonder why your Daddy ever told you such an outrageous story when he knew that you knew it was just for fun and totally untrue. On the other hand, I’m sure you know why.