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Mince Pie

A savory pie filled with boiled tongue, suet, currants, apples, citrus, and spices.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a large bowl, combine the boiled tongue, suet, currants, chopped apples, lemon peel and juice, and sweet wine. Add the grated nutmeg, cloves, mace, citron, and orange and lemon peel. Mix all ingredients thoroughly until well combined.

Bake

  1. Fill pie crust with the mixture and bake until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Clove + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled tongue
Provides the meaty body and savoury bulk of the filling.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist and tender as it bakes.
Currants
Supply sweetness and chewy texture through the filling.
Chopped apples
Add moisture and a tart note that balances the sweetness.
Citron
Adds candied, sweet-tart aromatic flavour and texture.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the filling thoroughly. Even distribution of the suet, fruit and spices means every bite tastes the same and the filling bakes evenly. Unevenly mixed fat or spice pockets can leave some portions greasy or overly strong.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Blackberryfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, lemon, wine, nutmeg, clove, mace, orange. 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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