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Fish Pie

A baked dish of salmon and thickened milk with oyster crackers, butter, suet, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with the pulverized oyster crackers until it reaches a mush-like consistency.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then stir in the butter and suet.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the thickened mixture and the salmon, starting and ending with the thickened mixture.

  2. Grate a little nutmeg between each layer.

  3. Bake until warm, as all ingredients are already cooked.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main flesh and flavor of the pie, already cooked, so it only needs warming.
Oyster crackers
Thicken the hot milk into a mush that binds the layers together.
Milk
Forms the moist base that the crackers thicken into the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the mixture and giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Suet
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a moist, tender texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk to a mush before layering. Starch from the crackers swells as they absorb hot milk. If the mixture is too thin it will not hold its layers, and if it is too thick it will bake dry and pasty.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, milk, oyster, butter):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, oyster, 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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