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Tench Pie

A baked pie with tench pieces, claret, water, butter, and seasoning, served with strong gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Tench 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

  1. Butter a pie dish generously and line the edges with pie crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the tench pieces in the dish, seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Dot the fish with small lumps of butter and pour the claret and water over it.

  3. Cover the dish with more pie crust and bake in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about an hour.

  4. Prepare strong gravy while the pie bakes.

Serve

  1. Once baked, pour the gravy through the hole at the top of the pie.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Tench
Forms the main filling, becoming flaky and tender as it cooks in the pie.
Pie crust
Encloses the fish so it steams gently in its own juices and the claret and water.
Claret
Adds acidity and wine flavour to the liquid that steams the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crust brown as it bakes.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the filling, especially when layered with the parsley.

The step that matters

Cover the dish and bake in a well-heated oven. A hot oven sets the crust quickly and traps steam so the fish cooks through gently without drying out. Starting with a properly heated oven helps the pastry rise and brown rather than becoming soggy.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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