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Fish Pudding

A steamed pudding made from cooked fish, breadcrumbs, suet, eggs, milk, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Fish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skin and bones from the fish.

  2. Chop the suet and pound it well in a mortar.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Add breadcrumbs, eggs, parsley, milk, and seasoning to the mortar and mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-greased pudding basin.

  3. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with a good white sauce or egg sauce.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it steams.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the pudding a light, soft body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich.
Cooked fish
Forms the main body of the pudding and gives its flavour.

“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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