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Dessert

Mincemeat

A fruit and spice mixture with butter, used as a filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 citrus

  1. Grate the lemon rind and squeeze out the juice from the lemons.

  2. Boil the rinds in spring water until tender, changing the water 4 or 5 times to remove bitterness, adding 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt to the first boiling water.

  3. Drain the rinds, remove seeds and inner skins, then chop them with the raisins in a wooden bowl.

Make the mincemeat

  1. Add the currants, sugar, and prepared apples, along with the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, cayenne pepper, mace, cinnamon, almond essence, and sliced candied orange and citron.

  2. Melt the butter and stir it well into the mixture.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Orange + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,402 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide acidity and aromatic oils from the rind and juice that brighten the mincemeat.
Apples
Add moisture and bulk, and their pectin helps the filling hold together.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture as they are chopped into the fruit base.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and chewy body throughout the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the fruit mixture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Changing the water when boiling the rinds. Bitter compounds in citrus pith and rind dissolve into boiling water, so replacing the water several times removes bitterness. Stopping early leaves the filling tasting harsh.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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