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Fish Pudding

A pudding made from shredded halibut, flour, cream, butter, eggs, and parsley, baked for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Shred the fish from the skin and bones, then chop it finely.

  2. Slowly add the cream and pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, combine the fish mixture with the flour and butter, adding the egg whites last.

  2. Butter a pudding mold and sprinkle it with chopped parsley.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil for 1.5 hours and serve hot with Sauce Hollandaise.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Halibut
Its proteins set when cooked, giving the pudding its body and structure.
Flour
Thickens the fish mixture and helps bind it so it holds together when cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the pudding tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and gives a smoother, more tender texture.
Egg whites
Set on heating and help give the pudding a light, firm structure.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites last. Egg whites trap air and set into structure when heated. Stirring them in gently at the end, rather than beating them into the mixture, helps keep the pudding light instead of dense.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, butter, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, butter, egg. 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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