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Appleless Mince-meat

A sweet tomato mixture simmered with sugar and spices, used as a filling for pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Appleless Mince-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mincemeat

  1. Chop the green tomatoes finely.

  2. Add the sugar, cloves, cinnamon, and allspice.

  3. Simmer slowly until the tomatoes are clear.

Store and use

  1. Store in a covered jar.

  2. For pies, use two-thirds tomatoes and one-third meat, seasoning with butter and boiled cider as needed.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tomato + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,348 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Green tomatoes
Form the bulk of the mincemeat and supply moisture and body as they cook down.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture while it thickens into a syrup.
Cloves
Provide a warm, pungent aroma and spice flavour.
Cinnamon
Adds warm, sweet aroma and spice flavour.
Allspice
Contributes a blended, warm aroma and spice flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer slowly until the tomatoes are clear. Gentle heat softens the chopped tomatoes evenly and lets their liquid evaporate and thicken with the sugar. Rapid boiling can scorch the sugar on the bottom of the pan and leave the tomatoes unevenly cooked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, clove, cinnamon, allspice. 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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