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Fish Pudding

A baked fish mixture of haddock, eggs, parsley, onion, bread crumbs, and optional veal suet, served with a brown soup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Bone the haddocks.

  2. Skin the haddocks.

  3. Pound the haddocks in a mortar.

  4. Rub the fish through a fine sieve.

  5. Return the fish to the mortar.

Make the pudding

  1. Add eggs, parsley, onion, white pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and veal suet or marrow to the fish in the mortar.

  2. Pound all ingredients together until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture into a shape.

  4. Boil for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the heads and fins of the haddocks in the brown soup.

  2. Strain the soup.

  3. Thicken the soup with butter and flour.

  4. Stir in anchovy sauce, essence of lobster, and Harvey sauce.

  5. Let the sauce boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce around the pudding before serving.

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

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddocks
Provide the main body of the pudding, which sets into a firm, moist mass when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the pounded fish together and help the pudding set as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and lighten the texture so the pudding holds together without becoming dense.
Butter
Adds richness and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with butter, giving it body and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Pound until well combined. Thorough pounding blends the fish, eggs and crumbs evenly; uneven mixing leaves pockets of loose or dense texture once the pudding sets.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, egg, parsley, onion, bread, veal, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, egg, parsley, onion, bread, veal, butter. 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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