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Royal Mince Pie

A pie filled with chopped sour apples, beef, suet, raisins, currants, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Royal Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine the chopped sour apples, beef, and kidney suet in a large bowl.

  2. Add the chopped and whole raisins, currants, blackberries, or raspberries.

  3. Stir in the brown sugar, boiled cider, cider vinegar, and salt. Mix well and add the Royal extract for mince pies.

Bake

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

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 + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Currant + cidertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour apples
Provide tartness and moisture that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Beef
Adds savory richness and body to the filling.
Kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, caramel-like flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, beef, currant, sugar, cider, vinegar):

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, beef, currant, sugar, cider, 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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