Skip to main content
Dessert

Summer Mince Pie

A pie filled with raisins, sugar, vinegar, butter, crackers, and spices.

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.

By Chicago. Bethany union church. Woman's society. [from old catalog] · 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 11,917 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

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

Directions

  1. Combine raisins, water, sugar, vinegar, butter, crackers, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice.

  2. Cook well together before filling pastry to bake.

By Chicago. Bethany union church. Woman's society. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,390 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide body and sweetness, and the chopped fruit forms the filling's main texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and thickens with the liquid, gives the filling its body.
Crackers
Rolled crackers absorb liquid and thicken the filling, giving it a moist, soft texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and raisins.

The step that matters

Cook the filling well before baking. The filling must be cooked thoroughly before it goes into the pastry, because the raw mixture would stay watery and the starches in the crackers need heat to thicken it properly.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, butter, egg):

  1. Lemonabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Currantabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Orangeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, 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).

“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 mincemeat pie recipes

Mock 26 See all 21 →

You might also like

Illustration of Cinnamon RollsIllustrationCinnamon Rolls71 recipesIllustration of Cinnamon CakeIllustrationCinnamon Cake42 recipesIllustration of White CakeIllustrationWhite Cake431 recipesIllustration of Pound CakeIllustrationPound Cake373 recipes