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A Remarkably Fine Fish Pie

A fish pie made with eels, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, and butter, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Prepare the eels

  1. Boil the eels, cut off the fins, and pick the flesh from the bones.

  2. Add the bones to the boiling liquid with mace, pepper, salt, and onion.

  3. Boil until the liquid is rich.

  4. Strain the liquid.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make forcemeat with the eel flesh, anchovy, parsley, lemon peel, salt, pepper, and warmed butter.

  2. Layer the forcemeat in a dish.

  3. Add the flesh of soles, small cod, or dressed turbot, seasoned with salt and pepper.

  4. Pour the strained gravy over the fish.

  5. Bake until the crust is 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eels
Provide the main fish flesh that forms the body of the pie.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat, helping it stay soft and savoury.
Anchovy
Contributes salty, savoury depth to the forcemeat.
Crumbs
Add structure and help bind the layers while the pie bakes and browns.

Swap the mace

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

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

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