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Fish Pie

A savory pie made with boiled fish, breadcrumbs, milk sauce, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 the fish

  1. Boil the fish, then remove the flesh and break it into small pieces.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a pie dish, layer the fish and well-toasted breadcrumbs alternately.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Boil the milk, then mix the flour with a little milk or water and add it to the boiling milk.

  4. Cook until the mixture thickens, then pour it over the pie.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until well baked and brown on top.

  2. For an improvement, beat an egg and pour it over the top before baking.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the pie, providing the filling's flavor and protein structure.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and add a toasted, crisp layer between the fish.
Flour
Thickens the boiled milk into a sauce that binds the pie together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as the pie bakes.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving a smooth, creamy texture when thickened.

The step that matters

Cook the milk and flour mixture until it thickens. Flour must be fully mixed in and cooked through, or the sauce stays lumpy and raw-tasting. Thickening happens as starch granules swell in hot liquid, so the mixture needs to reach a steady simmer.

“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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