Skip to main content
Main

Fish Timball

A baked fish dish with bread, butter, eggs, cayenne, salt, lime juice, and cream, served hot with a mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lime match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,491 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fish Timball

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and bread

  1. Boil the fish and save the water it was boiled in.

  2. Shred the fish and remove the bones.

  3. Soak the bread in water, then squeeze it dry.

Make the timball

  1. Mix the fish with the bread, butter, eggs, cayenne, salt, and lime juice.

  2. Add the cream last and beat the mixture very light for 30 minutes.

  3. Butter a mold and pour in the mixture.

  4. Boil hard for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve very hot with a sauce made from the reserved fish water and mushrooms.

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 + limetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Forms the main body of the timball and gives it its flavour.
Eggs
Set when heated, binding the mixture and giving it structure.
Bread
Soaked and squeezed, it adds softness and helps keep the mixture moist.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, leaving a softer, more tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture very light after adding the cream. Beating in air before cooking helps the timball rise and stay light. Adding the cream last keeps the mixture from being overworked, and the long boil then sets the eggs into a firm, tender body.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Limethe original

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes