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Salt Fish Pie

A baked pie with salted fish, hard‑boiled eggs, butter, water, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Salt Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the thick part of the salt fish in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Boil the fish and remove the finest layers, free from skin.

  3. Season the fish with white pepper and place it in a dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add slices of hard-boiled eggs, small pieces of butter, and ½ cup of water.

  2. Add a little mushroom ketchup, cover with pie crust, and bake for 1 hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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

Thick part of salt fish
Provides the main savoury flesh, which is salted and soaked to reduce its saltiness before cooking.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling as they set slightly with the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the filling as it melts.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury depth and umami to the filling.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven, adding a crisp, golden texture.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt fish. Salt fish is heavily cured, so soaking it for a long time draws out salt through osmosis. Too short a soak leaves the pie overly salty, while the fish should still keep its flavour.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, egg, butter, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, butter, mushroom, ketchup. 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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