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Fish and Oyster Pie

A savory pie made with cold fish, oysters, bread crumbs, spices, and butter or sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish and Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Remove bones from the fish and place a layer in a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  3. Add a layer of bread crumbs, oysters, nutmeg, and chopped parsley.

  4. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

Top and bake

  1. Cover with browned bread crumbs or puff pastry strips laid in a cross pattern.

  2. Seal the edges with a strip of pastry.

  3. Pour in melted butter or thin white sauce and oyster liquor before baking.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes if using cooked fish, or 1 hour if using fresh fish and puff pastry.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the bulk of the pie and provides the main body of the filling.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and moisture to the layers as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the fish and oysters, helping the layers hold together and adding texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as the pie bakes.

The step that matters

Pouring in the liquid before baking. The melted butter or white sauce and oyster liquor must be added before the pastry is sealed so they reach the layers. Pouring too little leaves the filling dry, while the bread crumbs and fish soak up liquid as the pie bakes.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, oyster, pepper, bread, parsley, 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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