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Mince Meat

A savory mixture of minced beef, apples, citrus, raisins, spices, and sweeteners, cooked and stored in jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mincemeat

  1. Mince the meat and beef tongue together.

  2. Add the ground suet, chopped apples, citron, orange peel, lemon peel, and whole lemons.

  3. Incorporate the Sultana raisins and choice layer raisins.

  4. Mix in the jelly, boiled cider, light brown sugar, syrup, and brandy.

  5. Season with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice to taste.

Heat and store

  1. Heat the mixture thoroughly and store in quart 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

  5. Orange + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 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

Beef tongue and meat
Provides the savoury, meaty body that the sweet fruit mixture is built around.
Ground suet
Adds richness and a moist, fatty texture to the filling.
Chopped apples
Contribute moisture, tartness and bulk to the filling.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the mixture while it is stored.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps preserve the mixture.
Sultana raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture thoroughly. Heating the mixture fully before jarring helps ensure it is evenly heated and safer to keep, since the meat and suet are perishable ingredients that spoil if not thoroughly cooked.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, beef, apple, orange, lemon, cider, sugar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Cranberryfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, beef, apple, orange, lemon, cider, sugar. 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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