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Lillislea Fish Cream

A steamed fish custard made with whiting, parsley, eggs, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Lillislea Fish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the whiting.

  2. Remove the flesh from the boiled whiting.

  3. Finely chop the parsley.

  4. Mix the chopped parsley with the fish.

  5. Grease some dariole moulds.

  6. Lightly heap the fish mixture into the greased moulds.

Make the custard and steam

  1. In a bowl, heat the egg white and yolks together.

  2. Add the milk, salt, and pepper to the egg mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into the moulds until filled.

  4. Cover the filled moulds with butter paper.

  5. Steam until firm.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Whiting + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together330 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and help it set firm when steamed.
Egg white
Adds structure to the custard so it holds its shape when set.
Milk
Provides liquid that the eggs set into a soft, tender custard.
Whiting
Forms the main body of the custard as the flaked fish.

The step that matters

Steam until firm. Egg custard sets as its proteins coagulate with gentle heat. Steaming gently and stopping once firm avoids overheating, which would make the custard grainy, watery, or rubbery.

“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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