Why it works: Haddock and cream work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 181 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Norwegian Fish Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Remove bones from the haddock and flake the fish.
Pound or chop the fish in a bowl or wooden mortar until the fibers are fine.
Add coarse sea salt, white pepper, finely grated onion, and a dash of mace.
Mix in butter, fish stock, and thin cream until the mixture is the consistency of thin batter.
Steam in a well-buttered mold for 2.5 hours.
Serve with drawn butter sauce.
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.
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Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together181 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,695 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,488 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together42,912 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the white pepper
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, onion, mace, butter, fish, cream):
- Nutmegfits better
- Capersfits better
- Parsleyfits better
- White pepperthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, onion, mace, butter, fish, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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