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Dessert

Minced Meat

A sweet mixture of suet, sugar, fruit, spices, and wine, left to sit and then stored in a stone jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Minced Meat

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Minced Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the suet in salted water (¼ teaspoon salt per quart) until tender.

  2. Let the meat cool completely before chopping it finely.

Prepare the fruit and spices

  1. Prepare the currants, spices, and seed the raisins.

  2. Chop the apples finely.

Mix and store

  1. Mix the chopped meat, fruit, sugar, spices, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, wine, cider, and brandy, and mix thoroughly.

  2. Let sit for a day before using.

  3. For long-term storage, omit the apples, lemon, wine, and cider.

  4. Mix the remaining ingredients and moisten with brandy.

  5. Pack tightly in a stone jar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 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. Nutmeg + allspicetop 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Provides fat that keeps the mince moist and rich as it sits.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps preserve the mixture.

The step that matters

Let the meat cool completely before chopping it finely. Suet is solid fat that must be fully cooled and firm to chop into fine, separate pieces. Chopping it warm makes it smear and clump, so it will not distribute evenly through the mince.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apple, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, mace. 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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