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The Breakfast Book

A carp stuffed with butter, gravy, and wine, baked under pie crust and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

The Breakfast Book

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 the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix fresh butter, strong gravy, and white wine.

  2. Stuff some of this mixture into the carp and form the remainder into balls.

Assemble the pie

  1. Cover a baking dish with pie crust.

  2. Place the carp and forcemeat inside.

  3. Add pieces of butter and a squeeze of lemon.

  4. Cover with another layer of crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavour through the filling and crust.
Strong gravy
Supplies savoury depth to the butter mixture that seasons the fish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich butter mixture.
Carp
Forms the main protein, cooked gently within the butter mixture and crust.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling, holding moisture and shaping the pie.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, white wine):

  1. Applefits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Grapefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, white 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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