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Dessert

Mince Pie

A fruit pie filled with currants, raisins, citron, apples, peanuts, and spices, baked between two crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix currants, raisins, citron, sugar, salt, orange juice and rind, lemon juice and rind, grape juice, cinnamon, mace, apples, and peanuts well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Put the filling between two pie crusts.

  2. Bake until nicely browned.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + grapetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,771 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the filling a thick, jammy body.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweet dried fruit.
Ground roasted peanuts
Add roasted, nutty flavour and body to the filling.
Grape juice
Adds liquid and fruity sweetness to the filling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon, grape, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, raisin, sugar, orange, lemon, grape, cinnamon. 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.

More mince pie recipes

Mock 45Filling 14Lemon 8Fruit 5Patties 5Christmas 4 See all 109 →

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