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A Salmon Pie

A baked salmon pie with a buttery crust, seasoned salmon, lemon slices, and fennel leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and fennel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 723 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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 salmon

  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 salt to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare the pie crust and decorate the edges with flowers or leaves.

  2. Fill the pie with the salmon mixture and cover it with a lid.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from the oven, take off the lid, and pour in the melted butter.

  2. Top with lemon slices and tuck in the fennel leaves.

  3. Serve immediately without a lid.

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. Lemon + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + fenneltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the bulk of the filling, giving the pie its main flavour and body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, keeping the filling moist and smooth.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich salmon and butter.

The step that matters

Pounding the salmon until very fine. Salmon left in coarse pieces gives an uneven, flaky texture. Pounding breaks the flesh into a smooth, spreadable paste that holds together when sliced and gives the filling an even texture throughout.

Swap the mace

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

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

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