Name: Cold Fish Pudding
Ingredients: fish, cooked and minced; mashed potatoes; 1 or 2 eggs, beaten; a little milk; salt to taste; 1 onion, minced and boiled

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Fish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Pick the fish from the bones and mince it.
Mix the minced fish with mashed potatoes, beaten eggs, milk, salt, and boiled onion.

Shape and brown

Press the mixture into a shape and turn it out.
Brush the outside with beaten egg.
Brown it in a Dutch oven.

Serve

Serve with melted butter in a sauce-tureen.

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.

Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Fish + potatotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together134 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when pressed and turned out.
Mashed potatoes: Add body and moisture, keeping the fish mixture soft and tender.
Fish: Forms the main body of the pudding and gives its flavour.
Milk: Adds moisture, keeping the mixture from drying out as it sets.