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Cooked Meat for Mince Pies

Cooked lean beef prepared for use as filling in mince pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cooked Meat for Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the beef

  1. Wash the beef and place it in a kettle with enough water to cover it.

  2. Skim off the scum as it reaches boiling point, adding hot water as needed until the meat is tender.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Remove the cover and boil until almost dry, allowing the juices to return to the meat.

  5. When it begins to fry in its own juice, remove it and set aside to cool, preferably the day before use.

Prepare for use

  1. The next day, pick out bones, gristle, and stringy bits before chopping.

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.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meat texture and rich savoury flavour that defines the mincemeat filling.

The step that matters

Boiling until almost dry. Removing the cover and boiling down the liquid concentrates the meat's juices and flavour; if it is left too wet the filling stays soggy, and if it is over-reduced it turns dry and tough.

“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.

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