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Fish Pie, with Tench and Eels

A savory fish pie made with tench, eels, onions, herbs, mace, anchovies, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Pie, with Tench and Eels

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 fish stock

  1. Clean and bone the tench, skin and bone the eels, and cut them into 2‑inch pieces, leaving the sides of the tench whole.

  2. Combine the bones, onions, herbs, mace, anchovies, water, pepper, and salt in a pot.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

  4. Strain the mixture.

  5. Let the strained liquid cool.

  6. Skim off the fat from the cooled liquid.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the tench and eels in a pie dish, seasoning each layer with salt, pepper, chopped parsley, and hard‑boiled egg yolks.

  2. Pour some of the strained liquid over the fish.

  3. Cover the fish with puff pastry.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Heat the remaining liquid.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper 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

Tench
Forms the main flaky fish body of the pie.
Eels
Adds rich, firm fish pieces that hold their shape during baking.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden, buttery crust that browns in the oven.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Anchovies
Contribute savory depth to the stock, boiled into the liquid.

The step that matters

Skim off the fat from the cooled liquid. Fat left on the stock can make the pie greasy and cloudy. Chilling the liquid lets the fat rise and solidify so it can be lifted off cleanly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, parsley, egg):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, parsley, egg. 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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