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Dessert

Minced Meat Pies

A pie filled with minced meat, apples, sugar, and brandy, baked in rich pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,291 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Minced Meat Pies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine minced meat, apples, sugar, and brandy.

Assemble the pies

  1. Prepare a rich pastry and line the bottom and top of three pie dishes.

  2. Fill the pastry with the meat mixture and dot with butter.

  3. Cover with the top pastry and seal the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Brandy + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Minced meat
Forms the savoury body of the filling, giving the pie its main bulk and richness.
Apples
Add moisture and a fruity sweetness that balances the savoury meat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling taste balanced against the meat and brandy.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, alcoholic flavour to the filling.
Rich pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Seal the edges of the top pastry. A tight seal keeps juices and steam inside the pie while it bakes. A loose seal can let filling leak out and dry the filling, and the pie may not brown evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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