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Cooked Meat for Mince Pies

A spiced beef mixture with apples, raisins, currants, and spices used as filling for mince pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 ↓

Cooked Meat for Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the meat

  1. Cook 4 pounds of lean beef in a kettle with enough water to cover it.

  2. Remove scum as it boils.

  3. Add hot water as needed until the meat is tender.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

  5. Remove the cover and boil until the liquid reduces and the meat begins to fry in its own juices.

  6. Set the cooked meat aside to cool, preferably overnight.

Prepare and mix

  1. The next day, remove bones, gristle, and stringy bits from the meat before chopping it finely.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the chopped meat with apples, suet, raisins, currants, citron, brown sugar, molasses, sweet cider, boiled cider, salt, pepper, mace, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

  3. Warm the mixture on the stove until heated through.

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. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 of the filling, and its juices add savoury richness as it cooks.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cools and warms.
Apples
Add tartness and moisture that balance the sweetness of the sugar and molasses.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep caramel flavour that rounds out the spices.
Molasses
Adds dark colour, sweetness and a robust, slightly bitter depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the meat until the liquid reduces. Boiling off the liquid until the meat begins to fry in its own juices concentrates flavour. Cooling the meat overnight also firms it, making it easier to remove gristle and chop finely.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, apple, raisin, sugar, molasses, cider, pepper):

  1. Figbetter flavor fit
  2. Plumbetter flavor fit
  3. Grapebetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, raisin, sugar, molasses, cider, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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