Name: Mince Meat
Ingredients: 1 pint beef, chopped; 2 pounds brown sugar; 1 pint pork, chopped; 1 pint cider vinegar; 2 quarts sour apples, chopped; Salt and pepper to taste; 1 pound seedless raisins; Cinnamon flavor to taste

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the beef, pork, and sour apples.
Add the whole raisins and cinnamon flavor.

Cook and store

Cook the mixture for about 1 hour.
Store in a gallon jar.

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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Cider + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,238 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef: Provides meaty body and richness to the filling.
Pork: Adds meaty texture and fat that keep the filling moist and rich.
Sour apples: Supply tartness and moisture that balance the sweetness.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and molasses flavor, and helps preserve the filling.
Cider vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and helps preserve the filling.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, pork, cider, vinegar, apple, pepper):

Plumfits better
Grapefits better
Mangofits better
Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pork, cider, vinegar, apple, pepper. 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.