Skip to main content
Dessert

Mince Meat

A sweet mixture of cooked meat, suet, dried fruit, citrus, spices, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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

  1. Chop the cooked meat and suet finely.

  2. Chop the raisins, apples, and citron finely.

  3. Grate the peel of one orange.

Combine

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large bowl.

  2. Mix thoroughly until well combined.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Allspice + nutmegtop 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. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and gives a rich mouthfeel.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture.
Apples
Add moisture and a tart balance to the sweetness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give a deep, rich flavor.
Cooked meat
Adds body and a savory, substantial texture.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aromatic spice that defines the flavor.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, raisin, orange, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, sugar. 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.

More mincemeat recipes

Mock Pie 26Pie 21Lemon 15Fritters 14Green Tomato 13Pies 13 See all 120 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesApple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes