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Flounder, or Flat Fish Pie

A savory pie made with flounder, butter, anchovy, horseradish, parsley, lemon peel, toast, and a gravy of bones and skin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Flounder, or Flat Fish Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and draw the fish, then toss it in butter.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into large pieces.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with crust and slices of butter, then place the fish pieces inside.

  2. Sprinkle with black pepper and add minced anchovy.

Make the gravy and bake

  1. Boil the bones, skin, horseradish, parsley, lemon peel, and toast in water.

  2. Reduce the mixture to about 1 cup of gravy and pour it over the fish.

  3. Cover with a lid of crust and bake at 300°F (150°C) until 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. 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. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Flounder
Forms the main body of the pie, cooking to flaky tender pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the fish stay tender while baking.
Anchovy
Adds deep savory flavor that enriches the fish without tasting strongly fishy.
Toast
Helps thicken the boiled gravy and adds body to the liquid.
Horseradish
Adds sharp pungency that cuts through the richness of the butter and fish.

The step that matters

Reducing the gravy to about 1 cup. Reducing the boiled bones and aromatics concentrates their flavor and body. Too little reduction leaves the pie watery, while over-reducing makes the gravy overly salty and thick.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

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