Skip to main content
Dessert

Mince Pies

A pastry filled with spiced beef, suet, raisins, currants, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mince Pies

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mincemeat

  1. Mix the beef, suet, raisins, currants, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, sugar, salt, lemon juice, and lemon peel in a large bowl.

  2. Add a little brandy and sherry to the mixture and combine thoroughly.

  3. Store the mixture in a jar, cover it, and keep it in a cool place for two days.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare puff pastry for the pie crust, shaping it into small tins resembling a manger.

  2. Fill the pastry with the mincemeat mixture.

  3. Serve with warmed brandy poured over the pie, igniting it before serving.

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.

  1. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Suet
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the filling rich and soft as it bakes.
Raisins
Add sweetness and a chewy texture to the filling.
Currants
Add sweetness and bulk, contributing fruity moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the spices and fruit.
Cinnamon
Provides warm aroma and spice flavour.
Beef
Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Store the mixture in a cool place for two days. Resting lets the spices, fruit, fat and spirits blend together, so the filling tastes more rounded than a freshly mixed batch.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, raisin, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, raisin, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, sugar, lemon. 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.

More mince pies recipes

Lemon 10Mock 4Royal 4 See all 116 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes