Mince pie

Returning to our New York editorial, the amused reader finds this eulogium upon mince pie:

“There goes much skill to the making of a mince pie. Within the fortunate inwards of the president of pies are strange dainties and spices, and Dr. Johnson’s drink of heroes. The elements are so mixed in it that nature may stand up and say to all the world: ‘This is a pie ! A great mince pie is a masterpiece!’”

An anonymous writer upon the same subject says for the comfort of semi-dyspeptics:

“Mince-meat ought to be extremely wholesome for the same reasons that make it good to eat—its flavors of sweet and sour, of meat, apple and spice, which relieve each other, and its finely divided particles which allow the choicer blending of flavors and save the stomach much of the grinding work which reduces food to the pulp in which it enters the blood. What gives mince pie its ill repute as the very spawn of nightmare, are its overdressing with suet and butter, only fit for polar consumption, and its drugging with spices. Spice is the very food of the nerves, rightly used, growing more essential as circulation and sense dull with age. But it should be delicately, discerningly used not to lose its potency. The overdressing with fat is a relic of the old English barbarism which stewed its food in tallow, and, as the old play has it, ‘took two fat wethers to baste one capon.’”