Skip to main content
Main

Mince Meat

A sweet and spiced minced meat dish with apple, raisins, currants, and spices, cooked with stock and finished with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix the chopped apple, raisins, currants, butter, molasses, boiled cider, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, grated nutmeg, mace, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Add enough stock from the cooked meat to moisten the mixture.

  3. Heat the mixture gradually to boiling point and then simmer for one hour.

  4. Stir in the chopped meat and jelly, and cook for an additional fifteen minutes.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Apple
Adds bulk and moisture, and softens into the mixture as it simmers.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps preserve it during long simmering.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Molasses
Adds depth of flavour, dark colour and moisture.
Chopped meat
Adds savoury body and substance to the sweet fruit base.

The step that matters

Heating gradually to a simmer. Heating slowly lets the fruit soften and its sugars dissolve evenly, while rushing the heat can scorch the sugars on the bottom of the pan and make the mixture taste burnt.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, raisin, butter, molasses, cider, sugar, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, butter, molasses, cider, sugar, cinnamon. 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

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes