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A Remarkably Fine Fish Pie

A fish pie made with eels, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, breadcrumbs, butter, and a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Remarkably Fine Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the eels until cooked, then remove the fins and pick the flesh off.

  2. Add the bones to the boiling water with mace, pepper, salt, and onion; boil until rich and strain.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make a forcemeat with the eel flesh, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and softened butter; place it at the bottom of a dish.

  2. Layer the flesh of soles, small cod, or dressed turbot on top of the forcemeat, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour the strained gravy over the fish and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Anchovy + turbottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main flesh that forms the rich, savory forcemeat base.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat and give it a soft, absorbent body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat and fish layers.
Anchovy
Adds deep savory flavor that enhances the fish without tasting strongly of fish.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Fish proteins set and turn opaque as they heat; overbaking toughens and dries the flesh, while underbaking leaves it unsafe to eat. Watching the fish rather than the clock keeps it moist and tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, anchovy, parsley, lemon, butter, turbot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, anchovy, parsley, lemon, butter, turbot. 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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