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Fish Pie

A savory pastry dish filled with mixed fish, herbs, and spices, baked with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Clean and cut the fish into middling-sized pieces.

  3. Mix the fish with parsley, thyme, eschalots, beaten spices, mushroom or truffle powder, pepper, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture in a deep dish with light force-meat around it.

  2. Cover with puff pastry and brush the top with beaten egg.

  3. Decorate the top with leaves of pastry.

  4. Bake until the fish is thoroughly cooked, about 25 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. A quarter of an hour before serving, add strong broth and a little Madeira wine.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh fish (salmon, cod, turbot, soles, sturgeon, or haddock)
Forms the main filling, providing the flaky body of the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky crust that browns in the oven and seals the filling.
Egg
Brushed on top, it helps the pastry brown and become glossy.
Light force-meat
Surrounds the fish, adding a soft, moist texture to the filling.
Strong broth
Adds savoury moisture and depth to the filling when added near the end.
Madeira wine
Adds a rich, sweet, aromatic note to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding broth and Madeira before serving. Adding liquid late keeps the pastry crisp and the fish from overcooking, while the hot filling still loosens and flavours the pie.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, thyme, mushroom, pepper, meat, egg, madeira wine):

  1. Marjoramfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, thyme, mushroom, pepper, meat, egg, madeira wine. 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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