Name: Summer Mince Pies
Ingredients: 5 crackers, rolled fine; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup molasses; 1 cup warm water; ½ cup vinegar or boiled cider; 2 eggs; 1½ cups chopped raisins; spices to taste

Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Summer 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.

Make the filling

Roll the crackers finely and combine with sugar, molasses, warm water, vinegar or boiled cider, and eggs in a bowl.
Season the mixture with spices to your taste.
Fold in the chopped raisins.

Bake

Pour the filling into a pie crust and cover with another crust.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until 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.

Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,806 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Crackers: Rolled fine, they replace the traditional meat and thicken the filling as they absorb liquid.
Molasses: Adds dark color, deep sweetness and a rich, robust flavor to the filling.
Eggs: Bind the filling and help it set firm when baked.
Raisins: Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.
Vinegar or boiled cider: Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and molasses.

Flavor stand-ins for the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, molasses, vinegar, egg):

Raisinthe original
Vanillaabout as good a flavor fit
Figabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, molasses, vinegar, egg. 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.