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Dessert

Simple Mincemeat

A preserved fruit and meat mixture made with beef, suet, apples, spices, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Simple Mincemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Get beef from the lower part of the round, boil until soft, and chop finely.

  2. Add suet and chopped apples to the beef.

Mix and cook

  1. Mix in remaining ingredients to suit your taste, adding boiled cider to achieve a soft consistency.

  2. If desired, vinegar and water can be used instead of boiled cider.

  3. Boil all together until the raisins are plump.

Store

  1. Store in sealed jars.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich.
Apples
Add moisture, tartness and body to the filling.
Boiled cider
Adds sweetness and moisture, and softens the mixture to the right consistency.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a plump, chewy texture as they cook.
Currants
Add sweetness and small chewy bursts of fruit.

The step that matters

Boil all together until the raisins are plump. Cooking softens dried fruit and lets the flavours blend. Stopping too early leaves hard raisins and a raw-tasting mixture, while cooking too long can dry the filling out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, apple, lemon, cider, clove, raisin, cinnamon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, lemon, cider, clove, raisin, cinnamon. 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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