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Indian

Mince Pies, with Egg Icing

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription

This recipe’s ingredient list has no crust or pastry, so it bakes more like a fruit dish than a pastry pie.

From a historical cookbook · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and egg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 118,511 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe.

Recipe from a historical cookbook.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + eggtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together118,511 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Meat + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,197 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,327 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together53,530 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon share little aroma chemistry, yet 53,530 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Coconutabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Figabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar, butter, egg. 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).