Skip to main content
Dessert

Mock Mince Pie

A sweet pie made with treacle, raisins, walnuts, biscuits, and a buttery pastry, topped with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Mock Mince Pie

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Mock Mince Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Combine treacle, raisins, walnuts, water, butter, crushed biscuits, vinegar, and spices in a pot.

  2. Mix and simmer until cooked.

Make the pastry

  1. Rub half the butter into the flour for the pastry.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg white and water with a knife.

  3. Roll in the remaining butter as usual.

  4. Cut rounds from the pastry, making twice as many as needed for puffs.

  5. Cut a small round from half of the pastry rounds to create a rim.

  6. Place these rims on the larger rounds to form a raised edge.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the assembled pies to a baking sheet.

  2. Brush the edges with reserved egg white for browning.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  4. Once baked, fill the centers with jam.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Walnut + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry once mixed with butter and liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the pastry tender and flaky when rubbed and rolled in.
Egg white
Binds the pastry dough and gives the edges a glossy, browned finish.
Treacle
Provides sweetness and a rich, dark flavor to the filling.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Rub half the butter into the flour. Keeping the butter cold and in distinct pieces creates layers of steam during baking, which makes the pastry flaky rather than dense.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, butter, biscuit, vinegar, meat, flour, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, butter, biscuit, vinegar, meat, flour, egg. 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.

You might also like

Baking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesSour Milk BiscuitSour Milk Biscuit27 recipesButter BiscuitButter Biscuit8 recipesBiscuit PuddingBiscuit Pudding7 recipes