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Mince Pie

A savory pie filled with minced beef, suet, currants, apples, spices, lemon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and suet

  1. Clean and boil the beef tongue until tender, then skin and chop finely when cold.

  2. If using sirloin, boil until tender and chop finely.

  3. Mince the beef suet as small as possible.

Mix the filling

  1. Mix the currants, chopped apples, brown sugar, mace, cloves, nutmeg, lemon rind, and juice in a large pan.

  2. Add the brandy and mix well.

  3. If the mixture is not moist enough, add sweet cider.

Store and bake

  1. Store the mixture in a tightly covered jar for up to four months.

  2. To make pies, line small round dishes with a thin crust, fill with the meat mixture, cover with crust, 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.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef tongue or sirloin
Provides the meaty bulk of the filling and holds its texture when finely chopped.
Beef suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist and rounds out its flavour.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy body to the filling.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sugar and spices.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that helps preserve the mixture.
French brandy
Adds aroma and acts as a preservative in the stored mixture.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, sugar, mace, clove, nutmeg, lemon. 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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