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Fish Timball

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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

  1. Boil the fish and save the water.

  2. Shred the fish and remove the bones.

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

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

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

  6. Butter a mold and pour in the mixture.

  7. Boil hard for 1 hour.

  8. Serve very hot with the reserved boiling 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

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.

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