Skip to main content
Main

Fish Pudding

A steamed pudding made from boiled red snapper, white sauce, and crackers, baked in a buttered tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish in salted water until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Remove the bones from the fish and pull the fish into pieces.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the fish with the white sauce and season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  2. Butter a loaf-shaped tin pan and fill the pan with the fish mixture.

  3. Cover the fish with buttered paper.

  4. Place another pan with boiling water on the stove to steam the pudding for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn the pudding out onto a platter.

  2. Garnish the pudding with parsley.

  3. Surround the pudding with small Irish potatoes.

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. Snapper + saucetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 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

Red snapper
Forms the main body of the pudding, setting into soft flakes when cooked.
White sauce
Binds the flaked fish together and adds moisture so the pudding stays tender.
Powdered crackers
Absorbs liquid and helps the pudding hold its shape when turned out.
Butter
Adds richness and keeps the pan and paper from sticking to the pudding.

The step that matters

Steaming the pudding. Steam heat must be kept steady so the fish cooks gently and stays moist. Boiling too hard or letting the water run dry can make the pudding tough or dry.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (snapper, pepper, butter, sauce, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against snapper, pepper, butter, sauce, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes