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Mince Pie

A savory pie with minced meat, apples, raisins, spices, and sweetened with sugar, molasses, cider, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the filling

  1. In a large bowl, combine the meat, apples, suet, raisins, citron, and sugar.

  2. Add the cloves, cinnamon, mace, black pepper, and salt; mix well.

  3. Stir in the cider and vinegar mixture, molasses, and lemon juice until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill pie crust with the mixture and bake until golden brown.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides savoury body and the traditional base of the filling.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar and molasses.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown during baking.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness, depth of flavour and moisture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, apple, raisin, sugar, clove, cinnamon, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, apple, raisin, sugar, clove, cinnamon, pepper. 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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