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A Salmon Pie

A salmon pie with lobster, seasoned with salt, mace, nutmeg, and butter.

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Make a good crust for the pie.

  2. Clean the salmon and season it with salt, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Place a piece of butter at the bottom of the dish and lay the salmon in.

  4. Boil the lobster, pick out all the flesh, and chop it small.

  5. Bruise the lobster body and mix it well with melted butter.

Bake

  1. Pour the lobster mixture over the salmon, cover with the pie lid, and bake at 400°F (200°C) until well cooked.

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. Salmon + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Butter + lobstertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

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

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 becomes flaky and tender as it cooks through.
Lobster
Adds sweet, rich flavour and meaty texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, carrying flavour through the filling.

The step that matters

Baking until well cooked. Salmon turns dry and firm if overcooked, while undercooked fish is unsafe. Cooking until the flesh just turns opaque and flakes easily keeps it moist and safe.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, nutmeg, butter, lobster. 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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