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General Directions for Making Mince Meat

A preserved mixture of beef tongue and heart with apples, suet, cider, spices, and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

General Directions for Making Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the beef tongue and heart in minimal water until tender, salting halfway through.

  2. Chop the cooked tongue and heart very fine.

  3. Measure and mix in twice as many chopped apples and half as much chopped suet as meat.

Make the mincemeat

  1. Add boiled cider, sweet pickle syrup, brandy, sherry, lemon and orange juice and rind, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, raisins, currants, and chopped citron.

  2. Cook in a preserving pan, stirring frequently.

  3. Add more syrup if too dry.

Store and use

  1. Put the mixture hot into fruit jars for storage.

  2. When making pies, add a tablespoon of brandy or wine to each pie.

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

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

  2. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Brandy + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cider + sherrytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

  5. Cider + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Provides the main meat body, becoming tender when boiled and finely chopped.
Beef heart
Adds meaty bulk to the mixture once boiled and finely chopped.
Suet
Adds richness and a moist, fatty texture to the filling.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness of the dried fruit.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy body to the mixture.
Boiled cider
Adds concentrated apple flavour and acidity that helps preserve the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture in the preserving pan. The mixture is stirred frequently because the sugars and liquids can scorch on the base of the pan. Stirring also helps it heat evenly and thicken to a spreadable consistency before it is stored hot in jars.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, apple, cider, syrup, brandy, sherry, orange):

  1. Apricotfits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, cider, syrup, brandy, sherry, orange. 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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