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Fish Pie

A baked salmon pie made with milk, oyster crackers, butter, suet, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the pap

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the boiling milk with the pulverized oyster crackers until it reaches a mush-like consistency.

  3. Once almost cool, stir in the butter and a little suet.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the pap and salmon alternately, starting and ending with the pap.

  2. Grate a little nutmeg between each layer.

  3. Bake until warm, as all ingredients have been previously cooked.

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. Salmon + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Oyster crackers
Thicken the milk into a mush-like pap that holds the layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pap a smoother, softer texture.
Salmon
Provides the fish flavour and flaky texture between the layers of pap.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crackers swell into a thick pap.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with crackers. Crackers must be fully pulverized and stirred into boiling milk so they swell evenly; lumps or uneven thickening leave a grainy, inconsistent pap that will not layer neatly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, milk, oyster, butter):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, oyster, butter. 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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