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Dessert

Lemon Mince Pies

A pie filled with lemon peel, apples, suet, currants, and sugar, baked in short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,918 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Lemon Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Squeeze the lemon and boil the peel until tender enough to mash.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed lemon peel, chopped apples, suet, currants, sugar, and lemon juice.

  3. Add candied fruit to the mixture as desired.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a short crust pastry and fill the patty pans with the mixture.

  2. Bake as usual.

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the peel and juice.
Apples
Add moisture and body to the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling rich and moist.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and fruity sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.

The step that matters

Boiling the lemon peel until tender. Peel is tough and bitter when raw. Boiling softens its fibres so it mashes smoothly into the filling instead of leaving tough, chunky pieces. Stop once it mashes easily, since over-boiling can make the peel taste more bitter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, apple, sugar):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, apple, sugar. 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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