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Mince Meat

A sweet and spiced meat mixture for pie, made with beef, apples, candied fruit, raisins, currants, suet, molasses, and cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 fruit

  1. Cover the raisins with cold water and seed them.

  2. Wash and pick over the currants, then cover both currants and raisins with cold water and cook slowly until the water has boiled away.

Cook the mince meat

  1. Add the chopped candied fruit and suet, sugar, molasses, spices, and cider, then boil slowly for 1 hour and 10 minutes, stirring often.

  2. Mix the apples and meat together, add salt and other ingredients, and cook thoroughly for 15 minutes.

Store and mature

  1. Store in a jar in a cool place until needed.

  2. Let the mince meat stand for at least three days before using.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins and currants
Provide sweetness, chewy body and bulk to the filling as they cook down.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that gives the mixture a moist, mellow texture.
Apples
Contribute moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness of the dried fruit.
Cooked beef
Adds savoury body and substance to the filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps build a deep, rich flavour as it cooks.
Molasses
Adds dark colour, moisture and a deeper, caramel-like sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking until the water has boiled away from the fruit. Cooking the dried fruit slowly until the liquid is gone concentrates its flavour and prevents a watery filling that could spoil in storage.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, raisin, apple, beef, molasses, 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 mince meat recipes

Pie Filling 11Pie 10with Apples 9Preserved 8Apple 7Mock 7 See all 183 →

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