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Fish Pie

A baked pie with fish, optional minced veal or fowl, mashed potato crust, butter, bread crumbs, and thick brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the fish with minced veal or fowl, if using, and season with salt and bread crumbs.

  3. Place the fish on a flat dish and create a border with mashed potatoes.

Top and bake

  1. Spread butter over the fish and sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.

  2. Top with balls of forcemeat, if desired.

  3. Bake until golden brown, then pour thick brown gravy over 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Haddock + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock, mackerel, or sole
Forms the main body of the pie and provides the fish filling.
Mashed potatoes
Form a border that holds the pie together and gives a soft, creamy texture.
Bread crumbs
Season the fish and form a golden, crisp layer on top when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the finished pie.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The pie needs enough heat for the butter and crumb topping to brown and the fish to cook through. Underbaking leaves the fish raw in the center, while overbaking dries the potatoes and fish.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, veal, bread, butter):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, veal, bread, 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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