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Flounder, or Flat Fish Pie

A savory pie made with flounder or flatfish, butter, anchovy, and a gravy of bones, horse-radish, parsley, lemon peel, and toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Flounder, or Flat Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and draw the fish, then toss it in butter.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into large pieces.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with crust and slices of butter, then place the fish pieces inside.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and minced anchovy.

Make the gravy and bake

  1. Boil the bones, skin, horse-radish, parsley, lemon peel, and toast in water until reduced to 1 cup of gravy.

  2. Pour the gravy over the fish, cover with a lid of crust, and bake at 300°F (150°C) until golden.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Radish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flounder
Provides the flaky white meat that forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the fish stay tender while it bakes.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savory depth that enhances the flavor of the fish.
Toast
Helps thicken the reduced gravy and adds body to the liquid.
Pie crust
Forms the sealed case that holds in moisture and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Reducing the gravy to 1 cup. Boiling the bones, skin and aromatics until reduced concentrates their flavor and gelatin. If the gravy is too thin, it will make the crust soggy; if it is over-reduced, the pie will be overly salty and dense.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, pepper, anchovy, horse, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Radishthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, pepper, anchovy, horse, parsley, lemon. 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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