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Easy-made Mince Meat

A sweet and spiced minced meat mixture with apples and raisins for pie filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Easy-made Mince Meat

makes six pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix raw hamburger, chopped apples, and sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Boil water, butter, and vinegar in a saucepan.

  3. Add the boiled mixture to the meat mixture.

  4. Stir in raisins and any additional fruit if desired.

Season and store

  1. Season with cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon to taste, but do not add cinnamon until ready to bake to avoid a ropy texture.

  2. Store in a cool place for weeks or use immediately; this quantity makes six pies.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw hamburger
Provides the meat base and savory body of the mincemeat filling.
Chopped apples
Supply moisture, tartness and bulk to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.
Vinegar
Contributes acidity that balances the sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding cinnamon at baking time. Cinnamon added early to a mincemeat filling can cause a ropy texture over storage, so the record advises holding it until the pies are ready to bake.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, vinegar, raisin, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Applethe original
  4. Quincefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, vinegar, raisin, clove, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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