Name: Fish Pie
Ingredients: 3 pounds of any kind of fish (cod, eels, soles, or turbot recommended); butter; chopped parsley; a pinch of allspice; salt; pepper; a few drops of lemon juice

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

Clean the fish as directed and cut it into pieces about 2 inches long.

Cook and cool

Fry the fish in butter with chopped parsley, allspice, salt, pepper, and lemon juice until half cooked.
Remove from heat and let cool.

Assemble the pie

Place the fish in a pie mold or pan, filling any hollow spaces with fish pie filling.
Proceed as you would for meat pies.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,289 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish: Forms the main body of the pie and supplies the flavor and texture.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the fish brown lightly while frying.

Swap the allspice

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

Thymefits better
Tarragonfits better
Marjoramfits better
Allspicethe original

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