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Salt Fish and Egg Pie

A pie made with salted fish, hard‑boiled eggs, onions, cloves, lemon thyme, and tomato conserve.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salt Fish and Egg Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt fish in water overnight.

  2. Bake the fish until soft enough to handle.

  3. Remove skin and bones, then flake the fish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer fish, onions, cloves, lemon thyme, and hard-boiled eggs in a pie dish.

  2. Mix water and tomato conserve, add Nepaul pepper, and pour over the pie.

  3. Cover with crust and bake until golden brown.

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. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Tomato + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Provides the main savoury body of the filling and is softened by soaking and baking.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, creamy texture and richness to the filling.
Tomato conserve
Adds acidity, sweetness and moisture to the filling.
Light or short crust
Forms the enclosing pastry that bakes to a crisp, golden top.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt fish. Salt fish must be soaked long enough to draw out excess salt; under-soaking leaves the filling overly salty, while the fish also needs baking until it flakes easily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, tomato, pepper, clove, lemon, thyme, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, tomato, pepper, clove, lemon, thyme, egg. 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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