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Salt Fish Pie

A savory pie made with salt fish, eggs, onions, and puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 479 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salt 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. Soak the salt fish in cold water overnight.

  2. Boil the fish until cooked, then remove bones and skin.

  3. Set the fish aside to cool on a fish drainer.

Layer the pie

  1. Peel and slice the hard-boiled eggs and onions thinly.

  2. Line the bottom of a pie dish with fish forcemeat or a layer of sliced potatoes.

  3. Add a layer of onions, then fish, then eggs, seasoning each layer with pepper.

  4. Mix mustard, essence of anchovy, mushroom ketchup, and water, then pour into the dish.

Bake

  1. Dot the top with bits of butter, cover with puff pastry, and bake at 400°F (200°C) 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. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Provides the main savoury, salty fish flavour that defines the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness to the filling as they set with the fish.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften during baking.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky, golden crust that seals the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Cover and bake the pie. The pastry must seal the dish so the filling steams and cooks through, while the puff pastry rises and browns in a hot oven. Too low a heat leaves it pale and greasy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, onion, pepper, anchovy, 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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