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Dessert

Mince Pies

A fruit filling of apples, raisins, currants, lemon, and sugar, stored for weeks before baking into pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Mince Pies

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 ↓

Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the lemons and apples

  1. Squeeze the juice from the lemons and remove the pulp and skins.

  2. Boil the lemon rinds until tender, changing the water 5 or 6 times to remove bitterness.

  3. Chop the rinds with apples and raisins in a bowl.

Make the mincemeat

  1. Add currants, sugar, lemon juice, and melted butter; mix well.

Store

  1. Store in a pot, cover with paper or bladder, and keep in a cool, dry place for 6-7 weeks.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted butter coats the fruit and adds richness and a smooth, moist texture to the mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps preserve it during long storage.
Lemons
Their juice and rind add acidity and bright aroma that balance the sweetness.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Currants
Add tart, concentrated fruit flavour and chewy texture to the filling.
Apples
Add moisture and body, softening into the filling as it is chopped and mixed.

The step that matters

Boiling the lemon rinds. Changing the water several times draws out bitter compounds from the peel. Simmering until fully tender also softens the rind so it chops and blends evenly into the filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, currant, sugar, butter, mace, 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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