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Fish Pie

A baked dish of mashed salmon or halibut layered with sliced potatoes, topped with egg yolk and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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 fish

  1. Boil the fish in salted water until cooked.

  2. Remove the bones from the fish.

  3. Mash the fish finely.

  4. Slice the raw potatoes thinly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the fish and potatoes alternately in a baking dish, adding salt, butter, and milk between layers.

  2. Brush the top with the egg yolk.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the boiling milk and stir well.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  4. Add salt.

  5. Stir in the chopped hard-boiled egg.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon or halibut
Forms the flaky, mashed body of the pie filling.
Potato
Adds starch and bulk, holding the layers together as it cooks.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the layers and the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the layers and the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the top, helping it set and brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk to the butter and flour. Stir well as the milk goes in so the flour disperses evenly. Lumps form if the flour is not blended into the fat first, and the sauce will be uneven.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, fish, milk, butter, egg, sauce, flour):

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, fish, milk, butter, egg, sauce, flour. 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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