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A Flounder Pie

A flounder pie made with boiled flounder, seasoned with pepper and sea salt, and baked with a crust and a broth made from the fish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Flounder Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Gut the flounders, wash them clean, and dry them with a cloth.

  2. Boil the flounders briefly, then remove the meat from the bones.

Assemble the pie

  1. Place a pie crust in a dish.

  2. Add a little fresh butter at the bottom and on the fish.

  3. Season the fish with pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

Make the liquid and bake

  1. Boil the bones in the water used for the fish, adding a bit of horse-radish, parsley, lemon peel, and a crust of bread.

  2. Boil until there is just enough liquid for the pie.

  3. Strain the liquid.

  4. Pour the strained liquid into the pie, cover with a top crust, and 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. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Radish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flounders
Form the main body of the pie filling.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish as it cooks.
Bread crust
Adds body and flavour to the liquid made from the bones.

Swap the radish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, horse, parsley, lemon, bread):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Radishthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, horse, parsley, lemon, bread. 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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