Skip to main content
Main

Mince Pie

A savory pie made with meat, raisins, maple sugar, apples, cider, pot liquor, suet, pickle juice, salt, allspice, cinnamon, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Mix all ingredients thoroughly together.

  2. Cook the mixture slowly for four hours.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides savory body and a tender, meaty texture after long slow cooking.
Suet
Adds fat that carries flavor and gives the filling a rich, moist mouthfeel.
Apple
Adds moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the sugars.
Raisins
Contribute sweetness and moisture as they plump during cooking.
Maple sugar
Adds sweetness and helps deepen the filling's flavor as it cooks down.
Boiled cider
Adds concentrated sweetness, acidity, and a deep fruity aroma.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture slowly for four hours. Gentle, low heat lets the meat soften and the flavors blend without scorching the sugars or drying out the filling. Boiling hard can burn the sugars and toughen the meat.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sugar, apple, cider, allspice, 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.

More mince pie recipes

Mock 45Filling 14Lemon 8Fruit 5Patties 5Christmas 4 See all 109 →

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes