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Hot Salmon Pie

A baked pie with salmon, fish trimmings, white sauce, herbs, and a puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Hot Salmon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut salmon into small pieces.

  2. Marinate the salmon in oil, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and shallot for 2 hours.

  3. Blend fish trimmings until smooth.

  4. Mix the blended trimmings with white sauce, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and carmine.

Assemble

  1. Line a round tin with puff or brioche paste.

  2. Spread the farce evenly.

  3. Arrange marinated salmon in the mold, filling gaps with chopped herring or bloater roe, mushrooms, or truffles.

  4. Cover with another layer of farce.

  5. Cover with another layer of paste.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Lift the top crust.

  3. Pour in sauce aux fines-herbes.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main flaky, tender filling layer of the pie.
Puff or brioche paste
Forms the buttery pastry shell and top crust that bake golden and hold the filling.
White sauce or cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, creamy body to the farce.
Fish trimmings or whiting flesh
Blended into a smooth farce that binds and moistens the layers.
Oil
Carries flavour into the salmon during marinating and keeps the fish moist.
Shallot
Adds a mild aromatic onion flavour to the marinated salmon.

The step that matters

Baking the covered pie. The pastry must brown and cook through while the fish and farce set gently inside. Enough heat for the full time sets the layers firm enough to slice cleanly, and lifting the top crust too early can let the filling loosen.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, parsley, thyme, shallot, fish, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, parsley, thyme, shallot, fish, sauce, pepper. 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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