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Dessert

Mock Mince Meat

A sweet mixture of sugar, bread crumbs, raisins, butter, vinegar, boiling water, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mock Mince Meat

three pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine sugar, bread crumbs, raisins, butter, vinegar, and spices in a pot.

  2. Pour in boiling water and stir well.

  3. Boil the mixture for one hour.

Use

  1. Use the filling to make three pies.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Bread + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,111 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the filling's texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body as it cooks.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and raisins.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, bread, butter, vinegar):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, bread, butter, vinegar. 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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