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Dessert

Lemon Mince Pies

A pastry pie filled with lemon rind, currants, sugar, brandy, suet, nutmeg, mace, and orange peel.

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 ↓

Lemon Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and boil the rind until tender.

  2. Pound the rind very fine.

  3. Mix the pounded rind with currants, sugar, brandy, and lemon juice.

  4. Add chopped suet, nutmeg, mace, and orange-peel or citron.

Bake

  1. Bake in puff pastry until golden.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the moist, rich filling.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, keeping the filling moist and tender as it cooks.
Lemon
Provides acidity from the juice and fragrant oils from the rind.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth, and helps carry the spice and citrus flavors.
Puff pastry
Forms flaky layers that rise in the oven and brown to a golden crust.

The step that matters

Boil the rind until tender, then pound it very fine. Boiling softens the rind's tough fibers so it can be pounded smooth and blend evenly into the filling. Undercooked rind stays gritty and can taste bitter.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, currant, sugar, brandy, nutmeg, orange. 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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