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Dessert

Mince Pie

A fruit and meat pie made with chopped meat, apples, raisins, and spices, simmered for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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

Prepare the meat

  1. Cook the meat until tender, then chop it finely.

Make the filling

  1. Add all other ingredients to the chopped meat.

  2. Simmer the mixture covered for three hours.

  3. For added moisture, you can use fruit juice or cold coffee.

  4. Add a few raisins when making the pie.

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 + grapetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  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 the savoury base and body of the filling once cooked and chopped.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist and tender during simmering.
Apple
Adds moisture, bulk and tartness that balances the sweetness of the filling.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deeper, caramel-like flavour to the filling.
Molasses
Adds dark colour, sweetness and a rich, slightly bitter depth of flavour.

The step that matters

Simmering the covered mixture. A long, gentle covered simmer lets the meat, fruit and sugars blend and soften while the lid traps moisture. Boiling hard or uncovered cooking can dry or scorch the filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More mince pie recipes

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