Dried fruit can be soaked overnight in brandy or cold tea and will come up fine Maybee although if it was years out of date, I’d probably throw it. Not sure about glacé cherries though, although Joseann suggests how to rehydrate them, but mine have never lasted long enough to need rehydrating, although sometimes my dried fruit dries out a bit. I bake most weekends and so my fruit gets used up quite quickly.
With the very old mincemeat, no I wouldn’t use that. I’d throw it away and buy new. Mr M makes the most delicious mince pies every Christmas. We don’t buy them because his are gorgeous (made with shop bought mincemeat) and he makes them every weekend from the end of November.
