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Dessert

Meat Puddings and Pies

A sweet and spiced mincemeat mixture of candied peel, apples, steak, sugar, spices, and brandy, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Meat Puddings and Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mincemeat

  1. Chop the candied peels, apples, and steak as fine as possible.

  2. Mix with nutmeg, ginger, salt, and sugar.

  3. Put the mixture in an earthen jar.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally.

  5. Add brandy and sherry. Stir well. Cover.

  6. Let cool in a cool place until ready to use.

Make the pies

  1. Butter small tins.

  2. Cover with a thin layer of pastry.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of mincemeat to each tin.

  4. Cover with another layer of pastry.

  5. Pinch edges.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Add moisture and body, becoming soft and blending into the filling as it cooks.
Rump steak
Adds savoury richness and body to the filling, as the meat is chopped very finely.
Candied orange peel
Adds concentrated citrus aroma and a sweet, slightly bitter flavour.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mincemeat.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps preserve the mixture.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 hours, stirring occasionally. Baking drives off moisture and softens the chopped fruit and meat so the filling cooks evenly. Stirring prevents the bottom from scorching and sticking to the jar.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (orange, lemon, nutmeg, ginger, sugar, brandy, sherry):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, lemon, nutmeg, ginger, sugar, brandy, sherry. 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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