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Mince Pies

A pie filled with boiled, chopped meat mixed with raisins, sultanas, currants, citron, apples, sugar, spices, and liquor, baked until golden.

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

Why it works: Raisin and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,180 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

Mince Pies

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Prepare the meat by boiling and chopping it finely.

  2. Combine the raisins, sultanas, currants, and shredded citron in a bowl.

  3. Add the minced apples, sugar, and spices to the mixture.

  4. Pour in the liquor and mix thoroughly.

  5. Let the mixture sit for at least a week to ripen.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make a pie crust using the best ingredients available.

  2. Fill the crust generously with the mixture and create a decorative top crust.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  2. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled meat
Provides the bulk and savoury richness of the traditional filling.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the filling a soft, thick body.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the filling.
Apples
Add moisture, tartness and body as they soften during ripening.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps preserve the filling during ripening.
Liquor
Adds moisture and aroma and helps preserve the mixture as it ripens.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture ripen. Resting the filling for at least a week lets the fruit, sugar and liquor blend and mellow. Skipping this rest leaves the flavours harsher and less cohesive.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, raisin, apple, 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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