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Mince Meat

A preserved meat product made from boiled beef, suet, spices, and a liquor of whiskey, sugar, molasses, cider, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and cider work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and suet

  1. Cook the beef until thoroughly done.

  2. Let the cooked beef cool before chopping.

  3. Chop the beef with the spice.

  4. Chop the suet with salt.

Make the mince meat

  1. Combine the chopped ingredients in a mixing bowl. Mix well.

  2. Add the whiskey.

  3. Add the mince meat liquor made by cooking sugar, molasses, cider, and water to 28 degrees on Baume's saccharometer.

  4. Prepare the mince meat liquor at least a day in advance to cool before use.

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

  4. Spirit + cidertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Currant + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,817 recipes

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 mixture moist and rich as it firms and flavours the filling.
Beef
Provides the meaty body and bulk of the filling.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and depth of flavour to the liquor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture while the liquor is cooked.
Whiskey or spirits
Adds aroma and helps preserve the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooling the mince meat liquor. The liquor is cooked to a set density and must cool fully before it is added. Adding it warm can soften the suet and fat, which can separate and make the mixture greasy and loose.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, spirit, sugar, molasses, cider):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, spirit, sugar, molasses, cider. 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 recipes

Pie Filling 11Pie 10with Apples 9Preserved 8Apple 7Mock 7 See all 183 →

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