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Mince Pies

A savory pie filled with minced meat, suet, fruit, spices, and sugar, cooked together with cider.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Mince Pies

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cook the lean meat until tender, then chop it finely.

Make the filling

  1. Combine the chopped meat, suet, lemon, apples, mace, currants, cinnamon, raisins, allspice, citron, cloves, brown sugar, and coarse sea salt in a large pot.

  2. Wet the mixture with boiled cider and cook together until the apples are done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Lemon + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  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

Lean meat
Provides the bulk and savory body of the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Apples
Contribute moisture, tartness, and soft body to the cooked filling.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a deep, molasses-like flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture.
Currants
Add small bursts of sweetness and chewy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples until done. Apples must soften fully so the filling becomes cohesive and no firm pieces remain. Cooking also drives off excess liquid so the mixture does not turn watery in the pies.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lemon, apple, currant, cinnamon, raisin, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lemon, apple, currant, cinnamon, raisin, allspice. 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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