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News & Features,
Feature,
Dec 17, 2009
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Mince pie was once inextricable from our national identity. Blamed for bad health, murderous dreams, the downfall of Prohibition, and the decline of the white race, it nonetheless persisted as an American staple through the 1940s. So what happened?
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by Cliff Doerksen
Mince pie—the kind made with meat—was once inextricable from our national identity. We spent weeks preparing it and days digesting it. We ignored the clergy crusading against it and fought in court for the right to dose it with booze. We devoured it for breakfast, supper, and dessert, and we shipped it to our soldiers to remind them of home. Then in short order it disappeared almost completely from the American table. I can't tell you why—but I can tell you it's delicious.
- Tags: Feature, apple pie, mince pie, as American as apple pie, Marion Howland, Common Sense in the Household, Old Victory Distillery, James Whitcomb Riley, Dry Law, Horace Fletcher, digestion-ash, Dr. Fenton B. Turck, Dr. Andre Tridon, Chicago Defender, Albert Allen, George Humphreys, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, suet, beef fat, Villager Foods, apple cider, National Society for the Promotion of Health, The Pickwick Papers, temperance movement, John Mason Tyler, Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Pure Food and Drug laws, 19th Amendment, Slideshow
