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Family Mince Pies

A savory pie filling of minced beef, suet, apples, raisins, preserved fruit, wine, and lemon, boiled and packed into jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Family Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and suet

  1. Boil the beef until tender.

  2. Chop the beef finely when cold.

  3. Chop the beef suet.

  4. Mix the chopped suet with the chopped meat, adding salt.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Pare, core, and chop the apples finely.

  2. Stone the raisins.

  3. Chop the raisins.

Combine and pack

  1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl, mixing thoroughly.

  2. Pack the mixture into jars for later use.

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. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Apple + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,207 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

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

  5. Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

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 substance of the filling.
Beef suet
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavour through the filling.
Apples
Contribute moisture, tartness and bulk to the filling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and helps keep the filling moist.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, apple, lemon, wine, orange):

  1. Cranberrybetter flavor fit
  2. Grapebetter flavor fit
  3. Blackberrybetter flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, lemon, wine, orange. 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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