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Dessert

Lemon Mince Pies

A fruit pie with lemon, apples, currants, candied fruit, suet, and sugar in short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Lemon Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemon.

  2. Boil the lemon peel until soft enough to mash.

  3. Mash the boiled lemon peel and mix in the apples, suet, sugar, currants, and lemon juice.

  4. Add candied fruit as desired.

Bake

  1. Prepare a short crust pastry and fill patty pans with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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 + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Add moisture and body to the filling, and softer sweetness as they cook down.
Suet
Adds fat that enriches the filling and keeps it moist as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly as it bakes.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the juice and peel.

The step that matters

Boil the lemon peel until soft enough to mash. Peel left tough or underboiled stays fibrous and bitter in the filling. Boiling softens the peel's cell walls so it mashes into a smooth, evenly flavoured mixture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, apple, 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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