Skip to main content
Main

Mince-meat

A savory pastry filled with suet, beef, dried fruit, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mince-meat

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Mince-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mince meat

  1. Mix suet, beef, raisins, currants, citron, sour apples, sweet meat and pickle syrup, and boiled cider in a large bowl.

  2. Add cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and brown sugar if needed for sweetness.

  3. Store in a cold place in a tightly covered stone jar.

Bake and serve

  1. To bake, line plates with pastry, fill with mince meat, and cover with an upper crust.

  2. Bake until golden brown and serve warm.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it bakes.
Beef
Provides meaty body and substance to the filling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Sour apples
Add acidity and moisture that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Boiled cider
Adds concentrated fruit flavour, acidity and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The pastry needs enough heat to brown and set into a crisp crust. Pale or soggy pastry usually means the oven was too cool or the filling was too wet when it went in.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, apple, meat, syrup, cider, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, apple, meat, syrup, cider, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More mince meat pie recipes

Filling 11 See all 10 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes