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Salmon Pudding

A baked salmon custard made with bread crumbs, butter, eggs, cream, and seasonings, served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salmon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the skin and bones from the fish and flake it into a bowl.

  2. Add the finely crumbed bread, butter, pepper, coarse sea salt, and onion juice to the fish.

  3. Beat the eggs until light, then mix in the cream.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the fish mixture and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Grease a mold and pour the mixture into it, then cover the top.

  2. Place the mold in a pot of boiling water and cook for 1.5 hours.

  3. Remove the mold from the water and dip it in cold water to loosen the pudding.

  4. Invert the pudding onto a hot dish and serve with white sauce, adding anchovy and lemon juice if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + salmontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish (salmon)
Forms the main body of the pudding and provides its flavor and protein structure.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when heated, holding the pudding together.
Finely crumbed bread
Absorbs moisture and adds body, giving the pudding a softer, lighter texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding tender as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking in the water bath. Egg proteins set gently at steady, moderate heat. Water that boils too hard can make the pudding spongy or cause it to crack, so keep the water simmering rather than violently boiling where possible.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, salmon, bread, butter, pepper, egg, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, salmon, bread, butter, pepper, egg, cream. 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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