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A Remarkably Jine Fish Pie

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Jine Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eels

  1. Cut off the fins of the eels.

  2. Boil the eels.

  3. Pick the flesh off the eels.

Make the gravy

  1. Add the bones to the boiling liquor with mace, pepper, salt, and onion.

  2. Boil the liquid until rich.

  3. Strain the liquid.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make forcemeat with the eel flesh, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and warmed butter.

  2. Spread the forcemeat at the bottom of a dish.

  3. Layer the fish on top, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour the gravy over the fish.

  5. Bake.

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 fish flesh and bones that build the flavour of the dish and the gravy.
Butter
Enriches the forcemeat, adding fat and richness for a moist, tender texture.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat and absorb fat, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the forcemeat, rounding out the flavour without tasting strongly of fish.

The step that matters

Boil the liquid until rich. Reducing the bone liquor concentrates its gelatin and flavour. If it stays thin, the gravy will taste weak and will not set or coat the fish well.

Swap the mace

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

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

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