I am 66 and I grew up in Central Missouri on a farm where we butchered our own beef and pork, too. My mother and grandmother always made mincemeat and they too used the meat from the cow head and added raisins,apples, and spices. My siblings and I loved to sneak into the kitchen and find the open jar of mincemeat that was going to be used for fried pies and eat the mincemeat right out of the jar with a spoon!
In later years, my mother-in-law made mincemeat using beef chuck roasts and grinding or chopping it and she added canned cherries and cranberries as well as apples, raisins, and spices.
I found a recipe that used ground beef and made it one year but it was not the same! Oleta