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Dessert

Mince Meat

A pastry dish of minced beef, suet, currants, raisins, apples, citrus, sugar, wine, brandy or cider, nutmeg, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the beef until tender and chop finely.

  2. Pick and chop the suet.

  3. Wash the currants and stone the raisins.

  4. Grate the peel of the lemons and add the juice.

  5. Chop the apples finely.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix all ingredients together: beef, suet, currants, raisins, lemon zest and juice, citron, apples, sugar, wine, brandy or cider, nutmeg, and mace.

  2. Bake the mixture in puff pastry with a lid on top.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  3. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty body and bulk of the filling once cooked and chopped.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it bakes.
Apples
Supply moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps preserve its texture and flavour.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the beef until tender. Cooking the beef fully breaks down its connective tissue, so it chops finely and blends evenly. Undercooked beef stays tough and grainy in the filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, currant, raisin, apple, sugar, wine, brandy. 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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