Skip to main content
Dessert

Mince-Pie Without Meat

A fruit pie made with dried fruits, sugar, spices, lemon juice, brandy, and flour, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince-Pie Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the dried fruits, brown sugar, spices, lemon juice, brandy, and flour. Mix well until the fruits are coated.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

  2. Cover with another pie crust or lattice top.

  3. Bake for 30-40 minutes 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Dried fruits
Provide the bulk, sweetness and chewy texture of the filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the filling brown as it bakes.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the fruit juices so the filling holds together when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit and sugar.
Ground cinnamon
Contributes warm aromatic flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Coat the fruits in flour before filling the crust. Flour mixed evenly through the fruit absorbs the released juices and thickens them. If the fruit is not well coated, the juices can run loose and make the filling wet and runny when baked.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, apple, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes