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Mince Pie

A pie filled with finely chopped leftover meat, sausage mince, butter, parsley, allspice, broth, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,289 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the leftover meat finely and mix with the sausage mince.

  2. Fry the mixture in butter with chopped parsley and allspice for 25 minutes, adding broth as needed.

  3. Stir in a pinch of flour while cooking.

Bake

  1. Remove from heat and let cool.

  2. Place the mixture in a pie mold and bake in the oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 2 hours.

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. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Leftover meat
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the pie its main meaty texture and flavour.
Sausage mince
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the filling moist and savoury.
Butter
Fat for frying the mixture, carrying flavour and adding richness to the filling.
Flour
Stirred in during cooking to lightly thicken the juices in the filling.

The step that matters

Adding broth as needed while frying. Frying for a long time can dry the meat and scorch the fat. Adding broth gradually keeps the mixture moist and stops it sticking, so the filling stays tender through the long bake.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, parsley, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, parsley, flour. 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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