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American Mince Meat

A dish of finely chopped meat and vegetables mixed with gravy, apples, and optional sage, served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sage work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 755 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

American Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mash the vegetables finely.

  2. Chop the meat very finely.

  3. Slice the apples.

  4. Fry the sliced apples.

Make and serve

  1. Warm the meat and vegetables with gravy or roast meat drippings.

  2. Mix the fried apples into the meat mixture.

  3. Sprinkle in sage if desired.

  4. Serve the mixture on a large slice of toasted bread.

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. Apple + sagetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together755 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Apple + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + sagetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together469 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Leftover cold meat
Forms the main body of the dish and carries its savoury flavour.
Good bits of vegetables
Add bulk and soft texture, blending into the minced meat.
Gravy or roast meat drippings
Add moisture and savoury meaty flavour as the mixture warms.
2-3 apples
Add sweetness and a light acidity that balances the rich meat.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, apple, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, apple, bread. 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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