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Fish and Oyster Pie

A layered pie of cold fish, oysters, bread crumbs, nutmeg, parsley, and butter or sauce, baked with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish and Oyster 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.

Layer the pie

  1. Remove bones from the fish and layer it in a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with pepper and salt.

  3. Add a layer of bread crumbs, oysters, nutmeg, and chopped parsley.

  4. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

Top and bake

  1. Cover with browned bread crumbs or puff pastry strips laid in cross-bars.

  2. Pour melted butter or thin white sauce and oyster liquor over the top.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour if using cooked fish, or 1 hour if using fresh fish and puff pastry.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold fish
Forms the flaky body of the pie between the layers.
Oysters
Adds briny flavour and juices that moisten the layers as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the juices and give the layers structure and body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Remove the bones from the fish. Fine bones are hard to see once the fish is layered with crumbs and oysters, and a bone left in the pie can be missed when eating. Checking the fish before layering keeps every bite safe.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, oyster, pepper, bread, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, oyster, pepper, bread, parsley, butter. 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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