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Salmon Pie

A savory pie with salmon, anchovies, mushrooms, herbs, and a brown gravy sauce, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

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. Set aside the salmon slices on a dish.

  2. In a saucepan, combine anchovies, mushrooms, parsley, shallots, thyme, butter, pepper, salt, nutmeg, tarragon, lemon juice, and brown gravy.

  3. Simmer the mixture gently, stirring constantly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with short pastry.

  2. Layer the salmon, hard-boiled eggs, and anchovies in the dish, spreading the herb sauce between each layer.

  3. Cover the dish with the pastry and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Shallot + thymetop 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 body of the pie and provides the flesh that sets with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the herb sauce, carrying flavour through the layers.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced texture and a mild richness between the layers.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and salt that rounds out the fish flavour in the sauce.
Brown gravy
Supplies liquid and savoury body that keeps the sauce moist during simmering and baking.
Short pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Simmering the herb sauce gently. Stirring constantly over gentle heat keeps the butter and gravy emulsified and prevents scorching on the pan base, so the sauce stays smooth and even before it is layered.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, mushroom, parsley, shallot, thyme, 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.

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