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Mince Meat

A boiled beef pudding with raisins, currants, figs, apples, spices, cider, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the beef the day before with just enough water to keep it tender.

  2. Pass the meat and suet through a food chopper.

Prepare the fruit and syrup

  1. The next morning, add the brown sugar to the cider and boil until reduced by half.

  2. Chop the raisins, citron, orange peel, dates, figs, and apples by hand or through a coarse food chopper.

Combine and seal

  1. Mix all ingredients together and bring to a boil.

  2. Seal the mixture while it is boiling hot.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 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. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Fig + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together614 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, and melts to give the pudding a smooth, rich texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the cider into a syrup as it reduces.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness, balancing the sweetness of the sugar and dried fruit.
Seeded raisins
Add sweetness and chewy body from concentrated fruit sugars.
Cider
Provides liquid and fruity flavour, reduced here to a concentrated syrup.

The step that matters

Seal the mixture while it is boiling hot. Sealing at a full boil heats the mixture thoroughly and drives out air, which helps the mince keep without spoiling. Letting it cool before sealing gives microbes more room to grow.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, orange, fig, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, orange, fig, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace. 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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