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Tourte Tie Poissons. — Fish Pie

A baked fish pie with crust, fish, herbs, spices, butter, wine or water, mushrooms, and optional roes or ragout.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Tourte Tie Poissons. — 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.

Assemble the pie

  1. Slice the fish into pieces.

  2. Cover a pie dish with crust.

  3. Place the fish in the dish with sweet herbs, salt, bruised spices, and a layer of butter on top.

  4. Cover with the upper crust.

Bake and make the ragout

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove excess fat and add a vegetable ragout made by stirring flour in butter until golden.

  3. Moisten with white wine or warm water, add mushrooms, herbs, and salt, and boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Skim and add parboiled soft roes of carp, stewing for 15 minutes.

  5. Pour the ragout 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. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Fish + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together444 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns with flour to form the golden base of the ragout and adds richness.
Flour (in the method)
Stirred into butter to thicken the ragout as it cooks.
White wine
Moistens the ragout and adds acidity that brightens the rich fish flavour.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savouriness and moisture to the ragout.
Soft roes of carp
Add a soft, creamy texture and concentrated flavour to the ragout.

The step that matters

Remove excess fat and skim before adding the ragout. Fat and foam rising during boiling would make the liquid greasy and cloudy. Skimming keeps the ragout clean-tasting and gives it a smoother, more appealing texture.

“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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