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Fish Pie, with Tench and Eels, and Hard Eggs

A savory pie of tench and eels with hard egg yolks, mushrooms, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fish Pie, with Tench and Eels, and Hard Eggs

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 and stock

  1. Clean and skin the tench and eels, bone the tench, and cut the eels into 2‑inch pieces.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the bones of the tench and eels, onions, thyme, parsley, mace, anchovies, and stock or water.

  3. Bring to a boil and simmer slowly for 1 hour, then strain and skim the fat.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a dish, place the eel and tench, season with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley, and add mushrooms and egg yolks.

  2. Pour some of the strained liquid over the fish, then cover the dish with puff pastry, sealing the edges.

  3. Brush the top with egg wash before baking.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) for about 30 minutes, until the pastry is golden.

  5. Pour the remaining hot liquid over the pie before serving.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Tench
Provides the main firm, flaky white fish that forms the body of the pie.
Eels
Give rich, oily flesh that stays moist and tender during baking.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, layered, golden crust that seals in the filling.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the stock to add savoury depth and umami.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish stock. Simmering gently for the full hour extracts gelatin and flavour from the bones without clouding the liquid. Boiling hard can break up the stock and make it cloudy and greasy, weakening the sauce that finishes the pie.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, mushroom, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, thyme, parsley, pepper, mushroom, egg. 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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