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A Substitute for Forced Meat

A fish-based meat substitute made from haddock, suet, butter, eggs, flour, cream, and salt, boiled for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and cream work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 181 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

A Substitute for Forced Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and dry the haddock.

  2. Remove the meat from the bones and pound it in a mortar.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the chopped suet and butter, and pound until smooth.

  2. Mix in the egg whites, egg yolks, flour, cream, and salt.

  3. Form the mixture into small balls or a large pudding.

Cook

  1. Boil in water for 3 hours.

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. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Provides the main body of the mixture, forming the substitute's flaky meat base.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich during long boiling.
Egg whites
Help bind the mixture and give it structure as it sets.
Egg yolks
Add richness and binding, helping the mixture hold together when cooked.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the mixture.

The step that matters

Boil in water for 3 hours. Long, gentle boiling is needed to set the egg-bound mixture fully through. If the water boils too hard, the balls may break apart or turn rubbery.

“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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