Skip to main content
Main

Poor Man's Mince Meat

A preserved mixture of boiled beef, suet, fruit, spices, sugar, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Poor Man's Mince Meat

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and suet

  1. Boil the beef until tender.

  2. Chop the boiled beef finely once cooled.

  3. Mince the suet into a powder.

Make the mincemeat

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped apples, raisins, currants, and citron.

  2. Add the spices, salt, and brown sugar to the fruit mixture.

  3. Pour in the boiled cider and mix well.

  4. Heat the mixture through, then seal it in 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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Lean beef
Provides the meaty body and savory bulk that the mincemeat is built around.
Suet
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it melts into the mixture.
Apples
Contribute moisture, tartness, and body that holds the filling together.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Boiled cider
Adds concentrated apple flavor, acidity, and liquid to moisten the fruit and meat.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture through, then seal it in jars. Heating the mixture thoroughly before sealing helps reduce microbial growth, while the high sugar and acid from the fruit and cider help keep it stable in storage.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, apple, raisin, cinnamon, clove, allspice, mace):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, raisin, cinnamon, clove, allspice, 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.

More mincemeat recipes

Mock Pie 26Pie 21Lemon 15Fritters 14Green Tomato 13Pies 13 See all 120 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes