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Sole or Cod Pie

A pie made with boiled sole or cod, oysters, and a cream sauce, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and fish work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sole or Cod 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 the filling

  1. Remove the bones from the fish and place it in a pie dish.

  2. Layer the fish with oysters and seasoning.

  3. Add the white stock and a small amount of butter if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 40 minutes.

  2. Boil the cream with enough flour to thicken it, then pour it into the pie before serving.

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. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Oyster + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,886 recipes

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

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Fish
Forms the body of the pie, flaking into tender pieces when baked.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that deepens the seafood taste of the filling.
White stock
Adds moisture and savoury depth so the filling does not dry out in the oven.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, thickened texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden, flaky crust over the filling.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream with flour. Flour must be fully cooked by boiling so it thickens the cream smoothly and does not taste raw or form lumps. Pouring the cream in just before serving keeps the sauce loose and glossy.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, oyster, fish, cream, flour. 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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