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Fish Cream

A steamed fish cream made with haddock, milk, breadcrumbs, eggs, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 base

  1. Boil the fish in salted water until cooked, then chop finely.

  2. Heat the milk and pour it over the breadcrumbs and butter.

  3. Add the chopped fish, egg yolks, lemon juice, salt, and pepper to the mixture.

Fold and steam

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Butter a plain mold and place a round of buttered paper in the bottom.

  3. Pour the mixture into the mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Gently turn out the fish cream, remove the paper, and pour over a butter sauce mixed with chopped parsley.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air that lifts the mixture, while yolks add richness and set the custard.
Haddock
Provides the main body of the dish and its flaky, delicate texture.
Breadcrumbs
Soak up the hot milk to give the mixture body and a soft, tender crumb.
Milk
Moistens the breadcrumbs and keeps the soufflé creamy and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour, and keeps the mold release clean.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the mixture and leaves a dense result.

“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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