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Mince Meat

A sweet, spiced meat mixture cooked slowly with apples, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, molasses, vinegar, whiskey, lemon juice, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, mace, ginger, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pot.

  2. Cook slowly for 3 hours, keeping the pot covered while cooking.

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

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

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 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

Apples
Provide moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness of the sugar and molasses.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the mixture moist and carries the spices.
Meat
Adds savoury body and a dense, hearty texture to the mincemeat.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, depth of flavour and moisture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture during slow cooking.

The step that matters

Cook slowly with the pot covered. Slow, covered cooking keeps the mixture from scorching on the bottom and lets the fruit, suet and spices blend while moisture is retained. Too much heat can burn the sugars and dry the mixture out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, meat, raisin, currant, sugar, molasses, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, meat, raisin, currant, sugar, molasses, vinegar. 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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Pie Filling 11Pie 10with Apples 9Preserved 8Apple 7Mock 7 See all 183 →

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