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Mince Meat

A spiced minced beef mixture with currants, citrus peel, spices, cider, and brown sugar, cooked slowly and stored in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the beef, suet, apples, and citron.

Cook

  1. Combine all ingredients in a pot.

  2. Cook slowly for two hours.

Store

  1. Transfer to a stone jar for storage.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide sweetness and chewy body, plus concentrated fruit flavour that carries the spices.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps preserve the mixture during long storage.
Sweet cider
Supplies liquid that softens the fruit and lets the mixture cook down gently.
Suet
Adds fat that gives richness and a moist, tender texture as it melts during cooking.
Beef
Contributes savoury richness and meaty body to the traditional mixture.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for two hours. Gentle, prolonged cooking lets the fruit, sugar and spices meld and the liquid reduce without scorching the sugars. Too much heat can burn the sugar on the base of the pot and make the mixture bitter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, orange, cinnamon, allspice, mace, nutmeg, cider):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, cinnamon, allspice, mace, nutmeg, cider. 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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