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Mince Meat

A sweet minced beef mixture with apples, raisins, currants, spices, and wine, boiled, cooled, chopped, and packed for storage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the meat in salted water (1 teaspoon salt per quart) until tender.

  2. Let the meat cool completely before chopping it finely.

Prepare the fruit and spices

  1. Wash, pick and dry the currants.

  2. Prepare the spices.

  3. Seed the raisins.

  4. Pare, core and chop the apples finely.

Mix and store

  1. Mix the chopped meat with the apples, sugar, currants, raisins, spices, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, wine, and brandy.

  2. Omit apples, lemon, wine, and cider for long-term storage.

  3. Mix the remaining ingredients.

  4. Moisten with brandy.

  5. Pack tightly in a stone jar.

  6. Cover securely.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 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

Beef or tongue
Provides the main body of the mince after boiling and chopping.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps preserve it.
Apples
Add moisture, tartness and body to the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour.
Currants
Add tart, fruity flavour and small pockets of chew.

The step that matters

Let the meat cool completely before chopping it finely. Chopping warm meat yields a gummy, greasy texture, and cooling lets the meat firm so it breaks into fine, even pieces that blend evenly with the fruit and spices.

Swap the currant

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

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

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