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Dessert

To Make Mincemeat for Pies

A mixture of boiled and minced calf or hog feet, fruit, sugar, suet, cider, brandy, spices, and salt for pie filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Make Mincemeat for Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the calves or hogs' feet until tender, then strain through a colander.

  2. Once cooled, strain again until it resembles pearl barley.

Mix the mincemeat

  1. In a large bowl, combine the minced feet, chopped apples, currants, raisins, brown sugar, suet, cider, brandy, mace, cloves, and nutmeg.

  2. For each quart of mixture, add black pepper and salt, and mix well.

  3. When ready to make pies, take out the desired amount of the mixture.

Make and serve the pies

  1. Cover pie molds with pastry, fill with mincemeat, and top with thinly sliced citron.

  2. Cover with a pastry lid, decorated with fanciful shapes.

  3. Serve hot or cold, but best when 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. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

  2. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Calves or hogs' feet
Provides body and a gelatinous texture once boiled and minced.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist and tender.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep caramel flavour to the filling.
Apples
Contribute moisture, tartness and bulk to the filling.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps preserve the mixture.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness, chewiness and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Straining the boiled meat. The meat must be cooked until fully tender and then strained fine, because coarse or tough pieces stay chewy in the finished filling. Cooling before the second straining makes the meat firm enough to break into fine, even grains.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, currant, raisin, sugar, cider, brandy, clove. 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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