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Mince Meat

A preserved meat mixture of beef, suet, fruit, spices, and wine, cooked slowly and canned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the beef in a small amount of water until tender.

  2. Let it cool in the cooking water.

  3. Chop the cooled meat finely.

  4. Mix it with the stock and twice the amount of finely chopped apples.

Prepare the fruit and suet

  1. Shred the suet, dredge it with flour and chop it finely.

  2. Cut the raisins in half.

  3. Chop the citron and almonds finely.

  4. Combine all mixtures.

Season and cook

  1. Add the currants, sugar, orange juice, lemon juice, grated rinds, quince preserves, strawberry jam, cloves, mace, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper, and salt. Mix thoroughly.

  2. Moisten with spiced vinegar.

  3. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  4. Add the Sherry wine and brandy.

Can and store

  1. Fill fruit cans.

  2. Seal.

  3. If the mince meat is too thick when ready to use, add a little sweet cider or vinegar from sweet-pickled fruit.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + quincetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Orange + quincetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the savory meaty body and bulk of the mincemeat.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture, and carries flavor through the mixture.
Raisins
Contribute sweetness and chewy moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and depth of aroma to the finished mixture.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 1 hour. Gentle heat lets the meat, fat and fruit blend and soften without scorching the sugars or drying the mixture. Too fast a boil can burn the sugar and make the texture uneven.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, almond, sugar, orange, lemon, quince):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, almond, sugar, orange, lemon, quince. 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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