Skip to main content
Main

Fish and Potato Pie

A baked pie of cooked fish and mashed potatoes topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 and Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Stir in the milk, bring to a boil, and season with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pie dish, layer half of the fish, pour over half of the sauce, then add the remaining fish and cover with the rest of the sauce.

  2. Spread the mashed potatoes on top and dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about an hour.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  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

Cooked fish
Forms the main filling and provides the savory body of the pie.
Potatoes
Form a soft, mashed topping that covers the filling and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and topping, and helps the top brown.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the melted butter.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour and butter before adding the milk. Stirring the flour into melted butter and cooking it briefly, then adding milk gradually, keeps the sauce smooth. Adding flour to hot liquid without this step can leave lumps and an uneven thickness.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, milk, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes