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Fish Pasty

A pastry filled with bacon and fish, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and whiting work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roll out the pastry to ½ inch thick.

  2. Lay strips of raw fat bacon on the pastry.

  3. Place the boned and stuffed fish on top in opposite directions.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fold the pastry over the fish and seal the edges with egg.

  2. Bake in a slow oven until cooked through and serve hot.

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. Fish + whitingtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Whiting + peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Plain pastry
Encloses the fish and forms a sturdy case that holds the filling while it cooks.
Raw fat bacon
Melts during baking, adding fat and moisture that keeps the fish from drying out.
Small fish
Forms the main filling, cooking through inside the sealed pastry.
Egg
Acts as a glue that seals the pastry edges and can add a glossy browned finish.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the edges are not sealed firmly with egg, steam and juices can escape during baking, and the pastry may open and leave the fish dry.

“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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