Name: Fish Pie
Ingredients: 3 lbs filleted haddock; ½ cup sweet milk; ½ cup soft bread crumbs; 2 eggs; 1 oz butter; Salt and pepper to taste; 1 teaspoon finely chopped parsley (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble the pie

Place the haddock in a well-buttered flat dish and season with salt and pepper.
Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the fish and dot with small pieces of butter.
Beat the eggs and mix with the warmed sweet milk, then pour over the fish.

Bake and serve

Bake for 1 hour.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley before serving, if desired.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock: Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through in the oven.
Eggs: Bind with the milk and set during baking to hold the pie together.
Sweet milk: Combines with the eggs to make a custard that moistens the fish.
Bread crumbs: Soak up the liquid and add body to the topping.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, milk, bread, egg, butter, pepper):

Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Cinnamonfits less well
Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, milk, bread, egg, butter, 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.