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Dessert

Mince Pie Filling

Fruit and nut filling for mince pies made with apples, raisins, dried citron, nuts, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mince Pie Filling

three medium-sized pies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the seedless raisins or English currants in water for 1-2 hours.

  2. Heat the soaked raisins or currants to boiling and thicken with flour.

  3. Mix in the ground raisins and all other ingredients.

  4. This filling is sufficient for three medium-sized pies.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Nuts + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  5. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

White flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a spoonable filling when heated to boiling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the apples and citrus.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy, moist bites throughout the filling.
Apples
Supply moisture and body, softening as they cook into the filling.
Nuts
Add crunchy texture that contrasts with the soft fruit.
Citron
Adds candied citrus flavor and a slightly bitter aroma.

The step that matters

Heat the soaked raisins or currants to boiling and thicken with flour. Flour thickens only when heated and stirred into the liquid, so it must reach a boil to gel properly. Adding it unevenly or without stirring can leave lumps or a thin, runny filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, nuts, sugar, flour, 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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