Skip to main content
Main

Fish Pie

A savory pie with cod or haddock, bacon, onion, parsley, and a butter‑flour gravy, topped with pie crust.

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

Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place a few pieces of bacon at the bottom of a pie dish.

  3. Cut the fish into pieces and layer them over the bacon, finishing with a couple of slices of bacon.

  4. Sprinkle the chopped onion and parsley in between the layers of fish.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter and stir in the flour until brown.

  2. Gradually add the warm water and flavor with sauce or brown ketchup.

  3. Pour the gravy over the fish.

Bake

  1. Cover with pie crust and bake gently for about 30 minutes, ensuring the fish remains moist.

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. Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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

Fish (in the method)
Forms the main body of the pie and cooks gently into flaky pieces in the sauce.
Bacon
Adds savory fat that flavors the fish and keeps it from drying out.
Butter
Carries the flour and adds rich flavor to the gravy base.
Flour
Thickens the warm water into a gravy that clings to the fish.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth that mellows as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake gently under the crust. Baking at a moderate heat lets the fish cook through and stay moist; high heat toughens fish proteins and dries it out before the crust is done.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, sauce. 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.

More fish pie recipes

Ling 12Salt 9Cod 8Sauce 4Tench and Eel 4with Tench and Eels 3 See all 121 →

You might also like

Boiled HaddockBoiled Haddock10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes