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Salt Fish Pie

A savory pie made with salted fish, eggs, onions, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Salt 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. Soak the fish in cold water overnight.

  2. Boil the fish until cooked, then remove bones and skin.

  3. Set the fish aside to cool on a fish drainer.

  4. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and onions thinly.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line the bottom of a pie dish with fish forcemeat or a layer of sliced potatoes.

  2. Add layers of onions, fish, and eggs, seasoning each layer with a little pepper.

  3. Mix mustard, Essence of Anchovy, Mushroom ketchup, and water, then pour into the dish.

  4. Dot the top with bits of butter, cover with puff pastry, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 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

Salt fish
Provides the main savoury body and flavour of the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliceable texture to the layers.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky, browned top crust over the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top crust brown.
Made mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the fish and eggs.

The step that matters

Dot the top with butter and cover with pastry before baking. The pastry must seal the filling so steam stays in and the crust can puff and brown. Butter on the surface adds fat that helps the crust brown and become flaky.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, egg, onion, pepper, anchovy, mushroom, 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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