Name: Mince Pies
Ingredients: 6 large lemons; ½ pound apples; 1 pound raisins, stoned; 1 pound currants; 1 pound sugar; ¾ pound butter, melted; Cayenne pepper (optional); Mace (optional); Candied orange or lemon (optional)

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Squeeze the juice from the lemons and scrape out the pulp and skins.
Boil the lemon rinds until tender, changing the water 5-6 times to remove bitterness.
Chop the rinds with the apples and raisins in a bowl.
Add currants, sugar, lemon juice, and melted butter; mix well.
Store in a pot, cover with paper, and keep in a cool, dry place for 6-7 weeks.
Optionally, add a little Cayenne, mace, and candied orange or lemon.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,918 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,791 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,920 recipes

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

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

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, raisin, currant, sugar, butter, pepper, mace):

Figfits better
Plumfits better
Peachfits about as well
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, currant, sugar, butter, pepper, mace. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.