Skip to main content
Main

Mince Pies

A pie made with minced tongue, currants, raisins, apples, almonds, spices, and suet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mince Pies

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tongue

  1. Cover the fresh tongue with equal parts salt, brown sugar, and powdered cloves for two days.

  2. Boil the tongue for about two hours until thoroughly cooked, then skin and mince it finely.

Prepare the fruit and spices

  1. Pick, wash, and dry the currants.

  2. Grate the rind of the lemons and extract their juice.

  3. Blanch and pound the bitter almonds and sweet almonds.

  4. Powder the nutmegs and grind the cloves and mace together.

Mix and bake

  1. Chop the beef suet and mix it with the raisins, minced tongue, currants, lemon rind, lemon juice, almonds, nutmeg, cloves, and mace.

  2. Fill pie plates lined with pastry and bake in a quick oven.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the filling moist and tender as it bakes.
Currants
Provide sweetness, chew and body to the fruit filling.
Sultana raisins
Add sweetness and moist, chewy texture to the filling.
Pippin apples
Contribute moisture, tartness and bulk to the mincemeat filling.
Sweet almonds
Add richness, nutty flavour and a tender texture to the filling.
Lemons
Add acidity and bright aroma from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Baking in a quick oven. A hot oven sets the pastry quickly so its base crisps before the rich, moist filling soaks it. A slow oven lets the fat and juices seep into the crust, making it soggy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, almond, nutmeg, clove, mace, beef, raisin):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, almond, nutmeg, clove, mace, beef, raisin. 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 pies recipes

Lemon 10Mock 4Royal 4 See all 116 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes