Skip to main content
Dessert

Meatless Mince Pie

A fruit pie made with raisins, prunes, cider, brown sugar, and lemon rind, baked like a mince pie.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,481 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Meatless Mince Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the prunes with their juices and the rind of the lemon.

  2. Add the seeded raisins, sweet cider, and brown sugar.

  3. Bake as you would any mince pie.

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

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

  2. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Raisin + cidertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together588 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cider + lemontop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together986 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Prunes
Soften when stewed, adding moisture, body and a deep, rich sweetness to the filling.
Seeded raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Sweet cider
Provides liquid that softens the fruit as it stews and carries its fruity flavour.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel-like depth to the filling.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the sweetness, and its rind adds aroma.

The step that matters

Stew the prunes with their juices and the rind of the lemon.. Stewing softens the dried prunes fully, so they break down and blend into the filling rather than staying tough or chunky. Cooking the lemon rind in the liquid also draws out its aromatic oils.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, cider, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes