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Mince Pies

A sweet pie with currants, sugar, spices, optional meat, and citrus, baked in a crust.

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

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mince Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mincemeat

  1. In a large pan, mix currants, sugar, mace, cloves, nutmeg, and chopped meat if using.

  2. Add brandy and sack, and mix well.

  3. Store in a stone pot for up to four months.

Assemble and bake

  1. To make pies, line a dish with pie crust.

  2. Layer with meat, citrons, mince meat, and orange peel.

  3. Squeeze orange or lemon juice over the layers.

  4. Cover with crust and bake until golden brown.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the bulk of the filling and a concentrated, fruity sweetness.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the mincemeat and helps preserve it during storage.
Brandy
Adds alcohol that helps preserve the mincemeat and contributes aroma.
Sack
Adds sweet wine flavour and moisture to the mincemeat filling.
Citrons
Add bright, bitter-tinged aroma and a citrus note to the filling.

The step that matters

Store the mincemeat in a stone pot for up to four months. Sugar and alcohol draw water out of the fruit and slow microbial growth, so the mixture keeps and its flavours blend. Stored too briefly, the filling stays harsh and less cohesive.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, brandy, wine, mace, clove, nutmeg, meat):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, wine, mace, clove, nutmeg, meat. 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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