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Mince Pie

A savory pastry filled with minced beef suet, roast beef or tongue, apples, currants, raisins, spices, candied peel, sugar, brandy, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Pie

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a large bowl, mix the minced beef suet, roast beef or tongue, minced apples, currants, raisins, ground cinnamon, ground ginger, candied orange peel, candied lemon peel, salt, raw sugar, grated nutmeg, brandy, and sherry.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay the bottom of a pie dish or small tin pans with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the mince mixture and cover with more puff pastry.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + orangetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the filling moist and tender as it bakes.
Apples
Add moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugar and dried fruit.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture through the filling.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture, plus moisture from the dried fruit.
Raw sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown slightly as it bakes.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth, and its alcohol carries the spice flavours through the filling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, apple, raisin, cinnamon, ginger, orange, lemon):

  1. Cranberryfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, apple, raisin, cinnamon, ginger, orange, 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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