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Dessert

Egg Mince Pie

A sweet pie made with hard‑boiled eggs, nuts, raisins, apples, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,371 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Egg Mince Pie

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. Boil the eggs until hard, then cool and remove the shells.

  2. Pass the eggs through a sieve.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the sieved eggs, nut meal, salt, sugar, raisins, chopped citron, water, chopped apples, zwieback crumbs, and vanilla or nutmeg, then mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and cover with a second crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

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

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + vanillatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Bind the filling and give it a rich, custardy body once sieved.
Nut meal
Adds body, fat and a toasty nutty flavour to the filling.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Apples
Contribute moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness.
Zwieback crumbs
Absorb liquid and help the filling hold together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The filling is rich in egg and moisture, so it needs a full bake to set and firm. Stopping early can leave it runny, while the golden crust shows the pastry is browning properly.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, walnut, sugar, raisin, apple, vanilla):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, walnut, sugar, raisin, apple, vanilla. 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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