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A Salmon Pie

A savory pie filled with seasoned salmon and butter, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

A Salmon Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a good pie crust.

  2. Clean the piece of salmon well.

  3. Season the salmon with salt, mace, and nutmeg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a piece of butter at the bottom of the dish.

  2. Lay the seasoned salmon in the dish.

  3. Melt additional butter and pour it over the salmon.

  4. Cover with the top crust and bake until cooked through.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

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

  4. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Salmon + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together550 recipes

Mace and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,405 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main filling and provides the flesh that cooks through in the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the salmon from drying out as it bakes.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and gives the pie its structure and crisp texture.

The step that matters

Cover with the top crust and bake until cooked through. The salmon must reach a safe, fully cooked state without drying out. Sealing the crust traps steam and moisture, so the fish cooks gently inside while the pastry browns.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, nutmeg, 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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