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A Remarkably Fine Fish Pie

A fish pie made with boiled eel, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, breadcrumbs, butter, and a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Remarkably Fine Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the gravy

  1. Boil the eels until cooked.

  2. Remove the flesh and add the bones to the cooking liquid with mace, pepper, salt, and onion; boil until rich and strain.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Make forcemeat by mixing the eel flesh, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and softened butter.

  2. Spread the forcemeat at the bottom of a baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the fish (soles, cod, or turbot) on top of the forcemeat, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Pour the strained gravy over the fish and bake in a moderate oven (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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Anchovy + turbottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Eels
Provide the main flesh for the forcemeat and bones for the rich gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat and helps it brown in the oven.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat and absorb moisture so it holds together.
Anchovy
Adds savory depth to the forcemeat, blending into the fish flavor.
Soles, small cod, or dressed turbot
Form the top layer of white fish that cooks through in the gravy and oven.

The step that matters

Strain the gravy well. Straining removes bone fragments and small particles, leaving a smooth, clear liquid that sets the dish's texture and flavor without grittiness.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, pepper, anchovy, parsley, lemon, butter, turbot):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, pepper, anchovy, parsley, lemon, butter, turbot. 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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