Skip to main content
Main

Mince Meat

A minced beef mixture with suet, fruit, spices, and brandy, baked and stored.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Roast the beef fillet covered with paper until cooked.

  2. Let the roasted fillet cool.

  3. Chop the cooled fillet small.

Mix and store

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped meat, suet, apples, raisins, currants, citron, orange peel, lemon peel, spices, brandy, and salt. Mix all the ingredients well together.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pan and cover it tightly.

  3. Store in a cool place.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 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

Beef fillet
Provides the meaty body of the mincemeat once roasted and finely chopped.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it matures.
Apples
Contribute moisture and tartness that balance the sweet dried fruit.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture through the filling.
Currants
Add concentrated fruit sweetness and a chewy texture.
Brandy
Acts as a preservative and adds aroma to the mixture.

The step that matters

Store in a cool place. Brandy and the sugar in the dried fruit help preserve the mixture, but it should be kept tightly covered and cool so it matures safely rather than spoiling or fermenting.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, apple, raisin, currant, orange, lemon, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, raisin, currant, orange, lemon, cinnamon. 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 mince meat recipes

Pie Filling 11Pie 10with Apples 9Preserved 8Apple 7Mock 7 See all 183 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes