Name: Mince Pies
Ingredients: rough puff pastry (1/8 inch thick); 1 teaspoon mincemeat per pie; milk or water for brushing; castor sugar for sprinkling

Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

rough puff pastry (1/8 inch thick)
1 teaspoon mincemeat per pie
milk or water for brushing
castor sugar for sprinkling

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Roll out the rough puff pastry to 1/8 inch thick and stamp into rounds.
Line small tins with the pastry rounds.

Fill and cover

Place 1 teaspoon of mincemeat in each lined tin.
Roll out more pastry thicker than the first, stamp into rounds the size of the tin tops.
Wet the edges of the pastry rounds and cover the pies.

Glaze and bake

Brush the tops with milk or water and sprinkle with castor sugar.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 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.

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.

Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rough puff pastry: Its layers of fat and dough puff up in the oven to form flaky, tender walls.
Mincemeat: Provides the sweet, spiced, fruity filling that defines the pie.
Castor sugar: Sprinkled on top, it sweetens the crust and helps it brown.