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Dessert

For Making Mince Pies

A savory filling of beef, suet, pip‑pins, raisins, currants, spices, and citrus, sweetened with sugar and moistened with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

For Making Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Parboil the beef until tender.

  2. Chop the beef, suet, pip-pins, and raisins together finely.

  3. Sweeten the mixture with Lisbon sugar.

  4. Add the currants, all-spice, salt, lemon juice, angelica, and candied orange-peel.

  5. Mix everything well and moisten with sack or brandy.

  6. Store any leftover mixture for up to a month.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Angelica + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty body and chewy texture of the filling once parboiled and chopped.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it firms and flavours the mixture.
Raisins
Contribute sweetness and chewy moisture to the finely chopped filling.
Currants
Add sweetness, chewiness and moisture throughout the filling.
Lisbon sugar
Sweetens the mixture so it tastes balanced against the rich fat and spices.

The step that matters

Mix everything well and moisten with sack or brandy. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of dry or overly rich filling. Spirit moistens and helps preserve the mixture, so it should be evenly distributed.

Flavor stand-ins for the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, lemon, angelica, orange, brandy, sugar):

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Apricotbetter flavor fit
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, lemon, angelica, orange, brandy, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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