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Mince-meat

A sweet preserve mixture of fruits, suet, and spices used as pie filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Mince-meat

Why it works: Plum and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Mince-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a large pot, combine cherry preserves, plum preserves, raisins, currants, citron, apples, orange peel, and suet.

  2. Add sweet cider, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves, and mix well.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil for a few minutes.

  4. Stir in 1½ gallons of whisky.

Use for pies

  1. When making pies, add a little more sugar and whisky to the filling.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Plum + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Cherry + plumtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Cherry + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together689 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Cherry + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together295 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the filling moist and tender.
Apples
Add moisture and body, giving the filling a soft, jammy texture.
Cherry preserves
Provide sweetness and fruity flavour, plus body through their sugar and pectin.
Plum preserves
Add sweetness and concentrated fruit flavour and help bind the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the whisky after boiling. Alcohol is volatile and its flavour fades with prolonged heat, so adding the whisky after the mixture has boiled keeps more of its aroma and taste in the finished filling.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cherry, plum, currant, apple, orange, meat, cider):

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cherry, plum, currant, apple, orange, meat, cider. 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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