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Little Fish Puddings

Small fish puddings made from haddock, bread, milk, eggs, and parsley, served with a broth sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Little Fish Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fish puddings

  1. Pound the haddocks until smooth.

  2. Boil the bread and milk with parsley until soft.

  3. Mix the bread mixture with the fish and rub through a sieve.

  4. Add 2 eggs, 1 yolk, salt, and pepper, then stir well.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg white.

  6. Shape the mixture into small sausages.

  7. Dust the sausages with flour.

  8. Boil in salted water for 15 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil the haddock heads, fins, and bones in water with parsley, onion, salt, pepper, and toasted bread for nearly an hour.

  2. Strain the broth and thicken with flour and butter.

  3. Stir in ketchup, soy sauce, and cayenne.

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

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

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddocks
Forms the main body of the puddings, giving them their fish flavour and delicate texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when cooked, giving the puddings structure.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and softness to the fish mixture.
Milk
Softens the bread and keeps the mixture moist and tender.
Flour
Dusted on the sausages and used to thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the puddings. Boiling for 15 minutes is enough to set the egg without making the delicate fish mixture tough or cause it to break apart. Keep the water at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil so the shapes hold together.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, bread, milk, parsley, egg, pepper, flour. 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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