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A Good Mincemeat Formula

A mixture of apples, sugar, dried fruit, spices, and meat, seasoned with salt and flavored with alcohol and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

A Good Mincemeat Formula

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the apples with their peel.

  2. Mix salt with the meat while chopping.

  3. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.

  4. Adjust flavor and consistency with alcohol and cider as desired.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

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

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh apples
Provide the bulk and tartness of the filling and its moist body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Seedless raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture.
Meat
Adds savoury richness and body to the filling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, raisin, meat, 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.

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