Name: Mince Pies
Ingredients: 6 lemons; ½ pound apples; 1 pound raisins, stoned; 1 pound currants; 1 pound sugar; ¾ pound butter, melted; optional: a little mace, candied orange or lemon

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Squeeze the juice from the lemons and scrape out the pulp and skins.
Boil the rinds until tender, changing the water 5-6 times to remove bitterness.
Chop the rinds with the apples and raisins in a bowl.
Add the currants, sugar, lemon juice, and melted butter, mixing well.
Store in a pot, covering 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.

Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,180 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).
Apple + curranttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,918 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,791 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Apple + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,920 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

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):

Figfits better
Plumfits better
Pearfits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, raisin, currant, sugar, butter, mace. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.