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English Mince Meat Recipe

A sweet mixture of apples, suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, spices, sugar, and whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

English Mince Meat Recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the suet into small dice with the candied lemon and citron.

  2. Add the apples and cut them moderately fine.

  3. Mix in the raisins, mace, cinnamon, and lemon juice, chopping everything together as fine as desired.

Combine

  1. Transfer to a large container and mix well, adding the currants and whiskey.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide bulk and moisture, giving the mince its soft, chunky body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich as it matures.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Whiskey
Acts as a preservative and adds aroma to the mixture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, raisin, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, currant):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, cinnamon, sugar, lemon, currant. 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 english mince recipes

Meat 3

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