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Dessert

Mince Pies, Without Meat

A sweet apple and raisin pie with suet, spices, and port, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mince Pies, Without Meat

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

  1. Combine the minced apples, suet, and raisins in a large bowl.

  2. Add the mace, cinnamon, powdered cloves, powdered sugar, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix in the lemon rind, lemon juice, port, and brandy until well combined.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture into a deep pie dish.

  2. Cover with a rich puff pastry and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 10 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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and moisture, softening as they bake.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist and tender.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the sharp lemon and spirits.
Port wine
Adds depth, fruitiness and aroma to the filling.

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

  1. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  2. Allspicebetter flavor fit
  3. Cardamombetter flavor fit
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, cinnamon, clove, sugar, lemon, port wine. 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.

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