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Dessert

Mince Meat

A preserved fruit mixture of green tomatoes, apples, raisins, currants, spices, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tomatoes

  1. Chop the green tomatoes finely and sprinkle with salt. Let the tomatoes drain for 1 hour.

Make the mincemeat

  1. In a preserving kettle, combine the drained tomatoes, chopped apples, brown sugar, and boiled cider. Cook the mixture until it becomes clear.

  2. Add the raisins, currants, cinnamon, allspice, clove, nutmeg, and citron. Bring the mixture to a boil and seal it in glass jars.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cider + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the mixture, softening as they cook and absorbing the sugar and spices.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the preserve and, as it cooks, helps thicken and preserve it.
Apples
Add body and pectin-rich structure that helps the mixture set.
Raisins
Contribute concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Currants
Add tart fruitiness and chewy texture throughout the mixture.
Boiled cider
Adds concentrated apple flavor and acidity to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it becomes clear. Cooking long enough lets the sugar concentrate and the fruit soften and thicken, which helps the preserve set and keep. Stopping early leaves it watery and more likely to spoil in the jar.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cider, raisin, currant, cinnamon, allspice. 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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