You can add mime types to a system by using xdg-mime.
command line tool for querying information about file type handling and adding
descriptions for new file types
Command to add a new mime type:
xdg-mime install [--mode mode] [--novendor] mimetypes-file
From the man page:
mode: can be user or system; for system you need root permissions.
install: Adds the file type descriptions provided in mimetypes-file to the
desktop environment. mimetypes-file must be a XML file that
follows the freedesktop.org Shared MIME-info Database specification
and that has a mime-info element as its document root. For each new
file type one or more icons with name type-subtype must be
installed with the xdg-icon-resource command in the mimetypes
context. For example the filetype
application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text requires an icon named
application-vnd.oasis.opendocument.text to be installed (unless the
file type recommends another icon name).
Alternatively you could use the ubuntu wiki on mime types. This uses manual instructions to edit in this text
gksudo gedit /etc/mime.types
and to edit it something like
text/extension extension
This editing of /etc/mime.types can also be accomplished with the command line stream line editor sed
but I would suggest using xdg-mime.