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Fish Cream

A steamed fish cream made with haddock, bread, eggs, cream, milk, lemon rind, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish base

  1. Scrape the fish flesh and rub it through a wire sieve.

  2. Soak the bread in milk for 30 minutes, then press out as much milk as possible.

  3. Break the soaked bread into small pieces in a bowl and add the fish.

  4. Wash and dry the lemon, then add the finely grated rind and salt.

  5. Add the beaten eggs and mix everything together, then stir in the cream.

Steam and serve

  1. Butter a plain mold or bowl.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Steam gently for 2 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the mixture, giving the cream its flavour and delicate texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when steamed, giving the cream its firm structure.
Bread
Soaked and crumbled, it adds softness and helps hold moisture in the mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the steamed mixture tender.

The step that matters

Steam gently for 2 hours. Eggs set with gentle heat; a rapid boil can make the mixture bubble and turn it rough and spongy instead of smooth and firm.

“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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