Skip to main content
Dessert

Mincemeat Bars

Bars made with oats, flour, sugar, shortening, baking soda, and mincemeat, baked and cut into pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Mincemeat Bars

14 to 16 bars
Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Process rolled oats through a food chopper using a coarse blade to measure 2 cups.

  2. In a bowl, mix oats, flour, baking soda, and brown sugar thoroughly. Cut in shortening until the mixture is crumbly.

  3. Divide the mixture into 2 parts.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pack half firmly in the bottom of an oiled 9x11 inch baking pan. Spread mincemeat evenly on top, then add the remaining dough and pack thoroughly.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

Cool and cut

  1. Cool thoroughly and cut into 14 to 16 bars.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Oats + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oats + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Rolled oats
Provide chewy bulk and a hearty, toasty texture to the crumb layers.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so the layers hold together when cut.
Shortening
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and crumbly rather than tough.
Brown sugar
Adds moisture and molasses flavour, and helps the crumb brown.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the dough slightly and encourage browning in the oven.
Moist mincemeat
Supplies the sweet, spiced, fruity filling that sits between the two layers.

The step that matters

Pack the bottom layer firmly. Firm packing keeps the base dense and even so the filling does not sink or leak through, and the bars hold their shape when cut after cooling.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes