Why it works: Meat and brandy work together. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 328 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Mince-pies
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.
Stir the mince-meat from the bottom of the pan before removing it.
Mix in the brandy.
Line patty pans with puff pastry, making the edges ¼ inch thick and the bottom ⅛ inch thick.
Fill the lined pans with mince-meat and cover with puff pastry, also ¼ inch thick.
Trim the edges at a slant and make a hole in the center of each pie.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.
Remove from tins and serve hot.
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.
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Meat + brandytop 26% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together328 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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