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Dessert

Nut Mince Meat

Nut Mincemeat is a mixture of nuts, dried fruit, spices, and sweet cider, boiled and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pecans and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 634 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Nut Mince Meat

makes 4 pints

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the nut meats, bread crumbs, currants, raisins, brown sugar, lemon, orange, and citron peel, apples, cinnamon, cloves, and mace. Mix thoroughly and add enough sweet cider to moisten the mixture.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boiling point.

  3. Seal in pint jars.

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. Pecans + walnuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Walnut + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Nut meats
Add crunch and richness to the mincemeat's soft, fruity filling.
Currants
Contribute tart, concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture to the filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and molasses flavour, and helps preserve the filling.
Apples
Provide moisture and tart body that holds the fruit mixture together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help thicken the mixture into a spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Bring the mixture to a boiling point. Heating the mixture until it boils helps the sugar dissolve fully and reduces the chance of spoilage in sealed jars, so the mixture should be brought all the way to a boil before sealing.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pecans, walnut, bread, raisin, sugar, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pecans, walnut, bread, raisin, sugar, lemon. 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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