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Dessert

Summer Mince Pies

A sweet filling made from raisins, nutmeg, water, cinnamon, sugar, butter, vinegar, and crushed crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Summer Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine raisins, grated nutmeg, water, cinnamon, sugar, butter, vinegar, and crushed crackers in a large pot.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring well until it thickens.

Fill the pies

  1. Allow the filling to cool before using it to fill pie crusts.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the filling as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fat-based mouthfeel to the filling.
Crushed crackers
Act as a binder that soaks up liquid and helps the filling thicken.

The step that matters

Cool the filling before filling the crusts. Cooking thickens the mixture as it cools, so a warm filling can stay loose and make the crust soggy. Letting it cool first gives a firmer, cleaner pie.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

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

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