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A Codling Pie

A sweet fish pie made with small codlings, vine leaves, sugar, puff pastry, and custard of cream and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

A Codling Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the codlings

  1. Gather small codlings.

  2. Place them in a clean brass pan with spring water.

  3. Lay vine leaves on top of the codlings.

  4. Cover the pan with a cloth to retain steam.

  5. When the codlings soften, peel off the skin.

  6. Return the skinned codlings to the same water with the vine leaves.

  7. Hang the pan high over the fire until the codlings turn a fine green.

  8. Remove the codlings from the water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place them in a deep dish and add enough sugar to sweeten.

  2. Make a lid with rich puff pastry.

  3. Bake the lid until golden.

  4. Once baked, remove the lid.

  5. Cut the lid into pieces like sippets.

  6. Place the sippet pieces around the inside of the pie with points upward.

Make the custard and finish

  1. Boil 1 pint of cream with a stick of cinnamon to make a custard.

  2. Pour the custard over the codlings.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + cinnamontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,510 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Small codlings
Form the fruit filling, providing the main body and tart flavor of the pie.
Powdered sugar or loaf sugar
Sweetens the cooked codlings to balance their natural tartness.
Rich puff pastry
Forms the golden lid, which bakes crisp and flaky and is cut into sippets.
Cream
Makes the rich custard that is poured over the codlings, adding moisture and smooth texture.
Cinnamon
Flavors the cream custard with a warm, aromatic spice.

The step that matters

Hanging the pan over the fire until the codlings turn green. Gentle, sustained heat softens the fruit and sets its color without breaking it down into mush. Too much heat or too long a time can overcook the fruit and cause it to fall apart.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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