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Fish Cream

A steamed fish cream made with white fish, butter, breadcrumbs, eggs, milk, white sauce, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Pound the white fish in a mortar with butter to a stiff paste.

  2. Sieve the mixture and work in the bread crumbs, salt, black pepper, coraline pepper, and the yolks and whites of the eggs beaten separately.

  3. Add the milk, white sauce, and lemon juice, mixing well.

Steam and serve

  1. Put the mixture into a buttered mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Turn out and serve with any sauce.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the cream and gives it a delicate, flaky texture when cooked.
Eggs
Set when steamed, giving the cream structure and a light, custard-like firmness.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish form a smooth paste.
White bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help the mixture hold together with a softer texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the steamed cream tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Sieve the mixture and fold in the eggs. Sieving breaks down the fish fibres for a smooth texture, and separately beaten eggs add air and set the cream gently; overworking can make it dense.

“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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