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Fish Pie, with Tench and Eels, and Hard Eggs

A savory fish pie made with tench, eels, hard‑boiled egg yolks, puff pastry, and aromatic herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Pie, with Tench and Eels, and Hard Eggs

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.

Make the stock

  1. In a stewpan, combine the bones of the tench and eels, onions, thyme, parsley, mace, anchovies, and stock or water.

  2. Bring to a boil over low heat for 1 hour, then strain and skim the fat.

  3. Cool the liquid, then place the tench and eels in a dish.

Assemble the pie

  1. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, chopped parsley, and add whole mushrooms and egg yolks.

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

  3. Roll out puff pastry and place it around the edge of the dish, covering it.

  4. Before baking, brush the top of the pie with egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. When the pastry begins to color, pour some liquid over it.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tench
Forms the flaky, meaty body of the pie filling.
Eels
Adds rich, firm pieces that hold their texture during baking.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, layered crust that rises and browns in the oven.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help the glazed top brown.
Anchovies
Add savory depth to the stock, rounding out its flavor.

The step that matters

Cool the liquid before assembling. Adding the stock to the fish while it is still hot can overcook the delicate flesh and make the filling watery; cooling it first keeps the fish tender and the pastry crust from becoming soggy.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, mushroom, 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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