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Dessert

Mince Pie

A savory pie filled with minced meat, suet, dried fruit, apples, citron, spices, and sweetened with sugar, cider, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the meat and suet with a little salt, then let it stand overnight.

  2. Chop the meat and suet finely.

  3. Combine the chopped meat and suet with raisins, currants, chopped apples, citron, lemon zest, sugar, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Moisten the mixture with cider.

  4. Add brandy when preparing the pies.

Make the pastry

  1. Mix pastry flour and salt. Cut in lard until crumbly.

  2. Wet the pastry mixture with ice water. Refrigerate the pastry until cool before filling.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean meat
Provides the bulk and savory body of the filling once boiled and chopped.
Suet
Adds richness and moisture to the filling, keeping it tender as it cooks.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Currants
Add concentrated fruity sweetness and a chewy texture to the filling.
Lard
Shortens the flour with fat so the pastry turns out tender and flaky.
Pastry flour
Forms the structure of the pastry once moistened with water.

The step that matters

Cut in lard until crumbly. Fat coated onto flour particles limits gluten formation, so stopping at a crumbly texture keeps the pastry tender and flaky rather than tough.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, raisin, apple, lemon, sugar, cinnamon, clove. 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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