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Carp Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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 ↓

Carp Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Make a puff pastry and lay it in a pie dish.

  2. Place bits of butter on the bottom of the pastry, and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Scale and gut the carp, then soak them in vinegar, water, and salt.

  4. Wash the carp, dry them, and prepare the filling by mixing eel flesh, chopped anchovy, grated bread, beaten eggs, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  5. Fill the belly of the carp with the mixture and make forcemeat balls with the same filling.

  6. Cut off the tail and fins of the carp, place them on the crust with slices of fat bacon, a little mace, and bits of butter.

  7. Close the pie and pour in ½ pint of claret before 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, vinegar, anchovy, bread, egg, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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