Name: Sweet Mince-meat for Cakes and Pies
Ingredients: 4 ounces flour; 2 to 3 ounces butter; 6 ounces sugar; 1.5 ounces candied orange or lemon peel; 10 ounces currants; ¼ ounce cinnamon; ¼ ounce allspice

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Mince-meat for Cakes and Pies

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine flour, butter, and sugar until well mixed.
Add candied peel, currants, cinnamon, and allspice; mix thoroughly.
Use this mixture as a filling for cakes or 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.

Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,536 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together727 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,359 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the base of the mixture and gives it body.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture bind together.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps bind the butter and flour.
Currants: Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, orange, cinnamon, allspice):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Lemonfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, orange, cinnamon, allspice. 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.