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A Remarkably Fine Fish Pie

A fish pie made with small fish, onion, mace, pepper, sea salt, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, breadcrumbs, butter, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish for 15 minutes.

  2. Cut off the fins.

  3. Pick the flesh off.

Make the gravy

  1. Add bones to the boiling liquor with mace, pepper, salt, and onion.

  2. Boil until rich, then strain.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make forcemeat by mixing fish flesh, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and warmed butter.

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

  3. Layer the fish flesh on top, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour the gravy over it.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted into the breadcrumbs, it adds richness and helps the forcemeat hold together.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb the butter and fish juices, giving the forcemeat body and a soft, binding texture.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the forcemeat, enriching the flavour of the fish without tasting strongly of fish.
Fish bones
Simmered to make the gravy, releasing gelatin and flavour into the liquid for a rich sauce.

The step that matters

Boil until rich, then strain. Simmering the bones long enough extracts gelatin and flavour into the liquor, which gives the gravy body. Straining removes bone fragments so the sauce stays smooth under the fish.

Swap the mace

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

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

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