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Dessert

Apple Mince Pies

Apple mince pies are sweet pies filled with apples, currants, raisins, suet, sugar, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Apple Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a large bowl, combine the currants, apples, suet, sugar, raisins, orange juice, lemon juice, lemon peel, mace, allspice, and brandy. Mix well and cover tightly.

  2. Store in a dry, cool place until ready to use.

Bake and serve

  1. When ready, bake in two pie crusts like traditional mince pies.

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. Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the filling moist and tender as it bakes.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, as a moist sugar, adds depth and helps preserve the mixture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol helps preserve the filling during storage.
Apples
Contribute moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar and dried fruit.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Store in a dry, cool place until ready to use. The filling needs time to mellow and its sugar and alcohol help preserve it, but damp or warm conditions allow fermentation and spoilage in fruit mixtures with moist ingredients.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Clovebetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, apple, sugar, raisin, orange, lemon, allspice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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