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Mince Meat

A sweetened minced meat mixture flavored with molasses, cider, raisins, spices, lemon, vinegar, apples, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Mix

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped meat, molasses, cider, raisins, and sugar.

  2. Add the ground cloves, ground pepper, lemon juice and zest, vinegar, citron, chopped apples, salt, suet, grated nutmeg, and ground cinnamon, then mix all ingredients thoroughly until well combined.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place until ready to use.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chopped meat
Provides the savoury, rich body that forms the bulk of the mincemeat.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and deepens the colour and flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps preserve it by binding water.
Apples, chopped
Contribute moisture, tartness and bulk to the filling.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Suet
Adds fat that gives richness and a moist, tender mouthfeel.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, molasses, cider, raisin, sugar, clove, pepper):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, molasses, cider, raisin, sugar, clove, 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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