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Dessert

Mincemeat

A preserved fruit mixture made with lemon, suet, apple, sugar, raisins, candied peel, currants, brandy, and marmalade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Mincemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons and squeeze out the juice, then strain it.

  2. Boil the remaining lemons until tender enough to pulp, and mash the apple.

Combine and jar

  1. Add the other ingredients one by one, mixing well together.

  2. Put the mixture into jars with tightly covered lids.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

Chopped suet
Adds fat and richness, giving the mincemeat a moist, rich body.
Moist sugar
Provides sweetness and helps preserve the mixture.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aromatic oil from the rind, balancing the sweetness.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol, which helps preserve the mixture.
Apple
Adds moisture and body to the pulped fruit.

The step that matters

Boil the lemons until fully tender. The lemons must be soft enough to pulp fully. Under-cooked peel and pith stay tough and fibrous, so the mincemeat ends up with a coarse texture and uneven flavour.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, apple, sugar, raisin, orange, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, apple, sugar, raisin, orange, 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.

More mincemeat recipes

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