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General Directions for Making Mince Meat

A preserved mixture of beef tongue and heart with apples, suet, spices, and sweet liquids.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. 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 finely.

  3. Measure the chopped meat and add twice as many chopped apples and an equal amount of chopped suet.

Cook the mincemeat

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

  2. Cook all ingredients together in a preserving pan, stirring frequently.

  3. Add more syrup or pickle juice if the mixture is too dry.

  4. Adjust spices to taste.

Store

  1. Pack the hot mixture into fruit jars 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. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

  2. Apple + peachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Peach + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together947 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue
Provides the cooked meat base that gives the mincemeat its body and savory richness.
Beef heart
Adds more cooked meat to bulk out the filling and deepen its savory flavor.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness, balancing the sweetness and richness of the meat and fats.
Suet
Adds fat that gives the mixture a rich, moist, tender texture.
Raisins
Provide concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and acts as a preservative in the mixture.

The step that matters

Add more syrup or pickle juice if the mixture is too dry. Cooking drives off moisture and the mixture can stiffen and scorch in the preserving pan. Adding liquid keeps it moist, evenly cooked and stirrable, and it also helps the sugars and flavors blend.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, meat, cider, syrup, peach, brandy. 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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