Skip to main content
Main

Minced Meat

A minced beef or tongue mixture with apples, raisins, currants, spices, lemon, wine, brandy, and sugar, boiled, chopped, and seasoned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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 meat in salted water (1 teaspoon salt per quart) until tender.

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

Prepare the fruit

  1. Prepare the currants.

  2. Seed the raisins.

  3. Chop the apples finely.

Mix and store

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

  2. Mix thoroughly.

  3. Let sit overnight before using.

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

  5. Mix remaining ingredients.

  6. Moisten with brandy.

  7. Pack tightly in a stone jar.

  8. Cover.

Use for pies

  1. Take some minced meat for pies.

  2. Add chopped apples.

  3. Moisten with cider, 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
Forms the meaty body of the mince once boiled and chopped finely.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich in texture.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Apples
Add moisture, tartness and fresh fruit flavour to the mince.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Currants
Add tart fruit flavour and chewy texture.

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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes