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Dessert

Mince Pies

Mince pies are small pastry cases filled with a mixture of meat, suet, currants, sugar, spices, lemon juice, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Mince Pies

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the meat, suet, currants, sugar, and spices in a large bowl.

  2. Add the juice of the lemon and mix well.

  3. Pour in the Madeira wine to moisten the mixture.

  4. Fill pie crusts 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.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

  3. Currant + madeira winetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together74 recipes
  4. Sugar + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Meat
Gives the filling its savory body and substance.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling rich and moist as it bakes.
Currants
Add sweetness and a chewy texture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savory meat and rich fat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the heavy, rich filling.
Madeira wine
Moistens the mixture and adds a fortified, aromatic depth.

The step that matters

Pour in the Madeira wine to moisten the mixture. Adding the liquid after the solids are combined lets you judge how moist the filling is. Too much liquid makes the filling runny and can soften the pie crust during baking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sugar, lemon, madeira wine):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar, lemon, madeira wine. 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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