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Mother's Mince Pie Recipe

A savory pie filled with minced meat, apples, suet, raisins, sugar, spices, and cider, baked in a puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mother's Mince Pie Recipe

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine the minced meat, apples, suet, raisins, sugar, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, salt, and pepper in a large bowl.

  2. Add sweet cider or sweetened vinegar and enough water to moisten the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill a pie crust with the mixture.

  2. Cover with a puff pastry crust.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck meat
Provides the savoury, meaty body that makes up most of the filling.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness and richness of the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it bakes.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the crust brown as it bakes.
Sweet cider or sweetened vinegar
Adds acidity and sweetness that moisten and flavour the mixture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, apple, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, apple, raisin, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove. 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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