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Carp Pie

A savory pie made with carp, eel, oysters, and a sauce of eel bones, wine, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carp Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish and filling

  1. Scrape scales, gut, and wash the carp clean.

  2. Boil the eel until almost tender, then pick off the meat and mince it finely.

  3. Mix eel meat with bread crumbs, herbs, lemon peel, pepper, salt, nutmeg, anchovy, oysters, and egg yolks.

  4. Roll the mixture with butter and fill the carp's belly.

Make the crust and sauce

  1. Make a crust, cover the dish, and place the fish inside.

  2. Save the eel boiling liquor, add bones, mace, pepper, onion, herbs, and anchovy; boil until reduced to ½ pint.

  3. Strain the mixture, add white wine and butter mixed with a little flour, then boil again.

Bake

  1. Pour the sauce into the pie, cover with a lid, and bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the main body of the pie, providing the flesh that is baked within the crust.
Eel
Adds rich, savory flesh to the stuffing and flavors the boiling liquor for the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Egg yolks
Bind the stuffing and add richness and a smooth, set texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and thickens the sauce with flour.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor and tender texture to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Reducing the eel liquor to ½ pint. Reducing concentrates the flavor of the bones, mace, and aromatics into the liquid that becomes the sauce. Boiling too little or too much changes how seasoned and thick the sauce will be.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, lemon, pepper, anchovy, oyster, egg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lemon, pepper, anchovy, oyster, egg, 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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