Name: Lamprey Pie
Ingredients: 1 or 2 lampreys; puff pastry; coarse sea salt; black pepper; chopped parsley; a little mace; sliced onions; sliced potatoes; 2 glasses of good claret or ½ pint of cider

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Lamprey Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Clean the lampreys thoroughly and cut them into convenient pieces.
Line a pie dish with puff pastry.

Assemble the pie

Place the lamprey pieces in the dish and season with salt, pepper, parsley, and mace.
Add a layer of sliced onions over the fish, followed by a layer of sliced potatoes.
Repeat the layers of onions and potatoes.
Pour the claret or cider over the layers.

Bake

Cover with puff pastry and bake for 1 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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lampreys: Provide the main fish filling that gives the pie its character.
Puff pastry: Forms a flaky, golden crust that encloses the filling while baking.
Sliced potatoes: Add starch and bulk, soaking up cooking liquid so the layers stay moist.
Sliced onions: Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the layers.
Claret or cider: Adds acidity and liquid that moistens the layers and flavours the filling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, parsley, onion, potato, cider):

Thymefits better
Garlicfits better
Dillfits better
Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, onion, potato, cider. 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.