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Dessert

Mock Mince Pie

A sweet pie made with raisins, molasses, cider, currants, and lemon, baked at 350°F until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Mock Mince Pie

Why it works: Cider and currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Mock Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Roll the crackers and mix with chopped fruit.

  2. Add salt, beaten egg, molasses, cider, currants, sugar, lemon juice, and rind.

  3. Use spices to taste.

Bake

  1. Finish the pie.

  2. Bake like an apple pie at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Cider + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and add structure as it sets in the oven.
Molasses
Adds dark sweetness and a deep, rich flavour to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown in the oven.
Raisins
Provide chewy texture and concentrated fruit sweetness.
Crackers
Soak up liquid and give the filling body in place of a thickener.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, egg, molasses, cider, currant, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, egg, molasses, cider, currant, sugar. 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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