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Minced Meat

A preserved minced beef mixture flavored with fruit, sugar, spices, wine, and brandy.

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

  1. Boil the meat in salted water until tender.

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

  3. Wash, pick, and dry the currants.

  4. Prepare the spices.

  5. Seed the raisins.

  6. Pare and core the apples.

  7. Chop the apples finely.

Mix and pack

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

  2. Omit apples, lemon, wine, and cider for long-term storage.

  3. Mix remaining ingredients and moisten with brandy.

  4. Pack tightly in a stone jar. Cover.

Make pies

  1. Take out some meat to make pies.

  2. Mix with chopped apples.

  3. Moisten with cider.

  4. Add wine and brandy to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or tongue
Provides the savoury meat base that gives the mince its body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich during storage.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness.
Raisins
Contribute chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Currants
Add small pockets of tart sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Cool the meat completely before chopping. Warm meat softens the suet, so the mixture turns greasy and is hard to chop finely. Cooling firms the fat, letting the meat chop cleanly and mix evenly with the fruit.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, apple, raisin, nutmeg, 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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