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Dessert

Mince Pie

A savory pie made with chopped meat, apples, suet, spices, cider, sugar, lemon, raisins, currants, citron, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the meat until tender, then let it cool.

  2. Combine all the other ingredients with the cooled meat. If there is any juice that jellies, add it to the mixture.

Store

  1. Store in a cool place, well covered, for weeks.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the savory body of the filling once cooked and chopped fine.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it matures.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and moisture, deepening the filling's color and flavor.
Apples
Contribute moisture, tartness and body to the chopped filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps preserve it during storage.

The step that matters

Store in a cool place, well covered. Sugar, molasses and cider help preserve the filling, but cool, sealed storage slows spoilage and lets the flavors blend over weeks.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, apple, clove, allspice, cinnamon, cider, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, apple, clove, allspice, cinnamon, cider, sugar. 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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