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Fish Pies

A baked dish of fish pieces layered with butter and seasoning, topped with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Fish Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Simmer fish pieces in a small quantity of liquid for a few minutes.

  2. Place butter at the bottom of a pie dish.

  3. Layer raw fish pieces, forcemeat balls, or seafood in the dish.

  4. Season with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, and curry powder.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Boil fish trimmings to make gravy.

  2. Mix gravy with cream or white wine and add hot after baking.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Various fish
Forms the body of the pie, cooking into tender, flaky pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the base of the pie moist.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the gravy.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, sweet aroma to the seasoning.
Cayenne pepper
Adds gentle heat to the seasoning.

The step that matters

Add the gravy hot, after baking. Cream can curdle and separate if it is boiled or overheated. Adding the gravy hot after baking keeps it smooth, and it avoids baking the gravy with the fish, which can overcook the fish and make it dry and tough.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, lobster, pepper, cream. 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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