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Fish-Pies

A baked dish of fish topped with puff pastry and butter, seasoned with salt and optional sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and oyster work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish-Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place fish in a dish and season with salt and sage if using.

  3. Add bits of butter on top of the fish.

  4. Pour water into the dish until filled.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the dish with puff pastry, sealing the edges.

  2. If desired, substitute water with gravy and add force-meat balls and hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Bake until the crust is golden and the fish is cooked through.

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. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  2. Fish + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and cooks through under the crust.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the fish.
Puff pastry
Seals the dish and bakes into a golden, flaky crust that traps steam.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry edges. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the dish, so the fish cooks gently in its own moisture and the filling does not dry out or leak during baking.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, meat, egg, oyster):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, meat, egg, oyster. 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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