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Dried Fish Pudding

A pudding made from boiled fish, mashed potatoes, milk, butter, and served with egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dried Fish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Boil the fish, remove the skin and bones, and pound it.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the fish with an equal quantity of mashed potatoes moistened with milk and a bit of butter.

  2. Place the mixture in a dish and smooth it with a knife.

  3. Dot the top with small bits of butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Brown it in a Dutch oven and serve with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 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

Cooked fish
Forms the main body of the pudding and provides its savory flavor.
Mashed potatoes
Bind the pounded fish and give the pudding a soft, moist texture.
Milk
Moistens the potatoes so the mixture blends smoothly and stays tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top brown during cooking.
Egg sauce
Adds a creamy, rich contrast to the mild pudding when served.

The step that matters

Browning the top in the Dutch oven. The butter dotted on the surface melts and fat-driven browning needs enough heat to color the top without drying the moist interior. Too little heat leaves the pudding pale, while too much can dry it out before it is heated through.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, butter, egg, sauce):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, butter, egg, sauce. 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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