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Carp Pie

A savory pie made by stuffing a carp with eel, bread crumbs, herbs, oysters, and egg yolks, then baking with a crust and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Carp Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Scrape scales, gut, and wash the carp.

  2. Boil the eel until almost tender, then pick and mince the meat.

Make the filling

  1. Mix eel meat with bread crumbs, herbs, lemon peel, pepper, salt, nutmeg, anchovy, oysters, and egg yolks.

  2. Roll the mixture with butter and fill the carp's belly.

Make the sauce

  1. Save the eel liquor, boil it with bones, mace, pepper, onion, and herbs until reduced to ½ pint.

  2. Strain the mixture, add white wine and butter mixed with flour, then boil again.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make a crust to cover the dish and place the fish inside.

  2. Pour the sauce into the pie, cover with the lid, and bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Anchovy + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Carp
Forms the main body of the pie and provides the flesh that cooks through in the crust.
Eggs
Egg yolks bind the minced filling so it holds together when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help give the filling a firm, cohesive texture.
Oysters
Add savoury, briny flavour and moisture to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with butter, giving it body when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the crust brown.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce after adding the flour and butter. Flour thickens only when heated past its starch-gelatinising point while stirred, so the sauce must boil again to reach full body and avoid a raw floury taste.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lemon, pepper, anchovy, oyster, egg, butter. 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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