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Dessert

Brandy Minced Pies

A preserved pie mixture of currants, apples, suet, sugar, citrus, and brandy, packed into jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Brandy Minced Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the currants and mince the apples and suet.

  2. Pound the loaf sugar until fine.

  3. Grate the peel of the lemons and squeeze the juice from one.

Mix and pack

  1. Mix all ingredients together thoroughly.

  2. Pack the mixture into jars and seal.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + brandytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it stands.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweetness of the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps preserve it.
Brandy
Acts as a preservative and adds aroma to the filling.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.

The step that matters

Mix all ingredients together thoroughly. Even distribution of the brandy, sugar and fat keeps the filling evenly preserved and prevents pockets of spoilage in the jars.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, beef, sugar, lemon, orange, brandy):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, beef, sugar, lemon, orange, brandy. 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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