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A Salmon ' Pie

A salmon pie made with boiled salmon, spices, butter, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Salmon ' 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the salmon until cooked, then remove the skin and bones.

  2. Pound the salmon meat in a mortar until very fine, adding mace, nutmeg, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with pastry, then fill it with the salmon mixture.

  2. Cover the pie with a lid and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the pie from the oven, take off the lid, and pour 4 ounces of melted butter over it.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices and tuck in 2-3 bay leaves before serving.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Salmon
Forms the main filling, providing the flaky texture and rich flavor of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, moistening the filling and enriching the flavor when poured over the pie.
Bay leaves
Contribute a subtle aromatic flavor to the pie.

The step that matters

Pounding the salmon until very fine. Pounding breaks the cooked fish into a smooth, fine texture so the filling holds together and spreads evenly. Coarse pieces can leave gaps and an uneven, crumbly slice.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, nutmeg, pepper, butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, nutmeg, pepper, butter, lemon. 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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