Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 February 1906 — REAL MINCE PIES. [ARTICLE]

REAL MINCE PIES.

Few of the Genuine Article Are Served Nowadays.

City life has many advantages. It offers rapid transit and theaters, frequent editions of the papers and plenty of excitement. One can keep warm in winter and cool in summer, even in a big town. And thare is always plenty to eat and drink for the man with the price to satisfy his hunger and his thirst. But the city man suffers from one deprivation which looms to insurmountable proportions. Ha cannot get good pie, says the Washington Star. Did you ever stop in the midst of the quick-as-a-flash bolting of food, caiied by courtesy a luncheon, and compare the pie served at the rcach-and-grab shops with the pies of other years? Take the mince pie, for instance, that delectable* compound of dyspepsia-producing joy. Who ever gets a slab of mince pie nowadays that bears even a family resemblance to the highly spiced, juicy, subtly flavonol mince pie of the country? Why, everybody knows that the mince pies are all baked now by the thousands, in factories, from mincemeat piade by the hogshead, also in factories. It is absurd to expect the fine product of the kitchen in such circumstances. In the old days the housewife compounded her mincemeat with scientific care. The great crocks of it in the collar svere monuments to her patience and art. Pies filled from them were pies indeed. They tasted like Thanksgiving hud Christmas. Such pies were worth while, and they did not play havoc with the digestion, as do the pastry products of the shops and the factories nowadays. A fortune awaits the man who will put forth a mince pie that is a reminder of the olden times, a mince pie that is made of meat and fruits and natural flavorings and pure spices. Such a pie, compounded nfter an old recii»e, and baked in crusts of the country-kitchen brand, cutting up into five pieces and retailing at n nickel a slice, would go like the traditional hot cakes. The line would form on the right. Hot from the oven, emitting its apjietiking aroma, redolent of suggestions of the good old days of hickory tires and sleigh rides across country. It would transform the* midday rite of eatitig from a perfunctory necessity into a joyous opjiortuulty.