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Fish and Oyster Pie

A savory pie made from cold fish, oysters, bread crumbs, herbs, and butter or sauce, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and bone the tench.

  2. Skin and bone the eels.

  3. Cut the tench and eels into pieces 2 inches long, leaving the sides of the tench whole.

  4. Put the bones into a stewpan with onions, herbs, mace, anchovies, water, and seasoning.

  5. Let them simmer gently for 1 hour.

  6. Strain the broth, cool it, and skim off all the fat.

Layer and assemble the pie

  1. Lay the tench and eels in a pie dish.

  2. Between each layer, add seasoning, chopped parsley, and hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Pour in part of the strained liquor.

  4. Put a layer of fish in a pie dish, sprinkling with pepper and salt.

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

  6. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  7. Prepare a covering of either browned bread crumbs or puff-paste cut into long strips.

  8. Lay the covering in cross-bars over the fish, with a line of the paste first laid around the edge.

  9. Before adding the top, pour in melted butter or a little thin white sauce and the oyster liquor.

  10. Cover with puff-paste.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for ½ hour or more.

  2. Bake.

  3. When done, heat the remainder of the liquor and pour it into the pie.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

222Calories
17 gProtein
9 gFat
18 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 10 ingredients. The other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Oyster6 medium (84g)81
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0
Eelnot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs add body and richness to the filling between the fish layers.
Oysters
Oysters add a briny, savoury flavour that deepens the filling.
Tench
Firm white fish pieces form the main body of the pie filling.
Eels
Rich, fatty eel pieces add flavour and tenderness to the filling.
Anchovies
Anchovies, cooked into the broth, add savoury depth to the liquor.

The step that matters

Skimming the broth. Fat left in the strained fish broth would float into the pie and make the filling greasy, so it must be fully skimmed after cooling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, parsley, oyster, onion, egg, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, parsley, oyster, onion, egg, pepper. 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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