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Mince Meat

A minced beef dish cooked with apples, suet, sugar, spices, and wine, then cooled and optionally finished with apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 295 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mince Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Boil the beef until tender.

Make the mincemeat

  1. Combine the chopped apples, suet, sugar, salt, raisins, currants, citron, angelica, maraschino cherries, spiced juice, sherry, boiled cider, and brandy in a large bowl.

  2. Add the ground cinnamon and ground cloves, mixing well.

  3. Boil the mixture for 25 minutes, then let it cool.

  4. After cooling, add the apple jelly if desired.

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. Apple + cherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together295 recipes

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

  2. Apple + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Angelica + cherrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + angelicatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together49 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty bulk and rich body of the mincemeat.
Apples
Add moisture, tartness and body that balance the sweetness.
Suet
Adds fat that gives a rich, moist texture as it melts.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps preserve it.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Sherry
Adds alcohol and flavour that help preserve and deepen the mixture.

The step that matters

Boiling the mixture for 25 minutes. Simmering cooks the raw apples and beef and reduces the liquid, while the sugar and alcohol help keep the mincemeat stable. Boiling too briefly leaves it less cooked and less well preserved.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, raisin, currant, angelica, cherry, sherry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applethe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, raisin, currant, angelica, cherry, sherry. 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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