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Fish Custard

A baked dish of haddock layered with butter and breadcrumbs, topped with a custard of eggs and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Custard

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and layer

  1. Skin and bone the haddocks.

  2. In a well-buttered pie dish, layer the fish, bits of butter, and bread crumbs alternately until all ingredients are used.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately, then mix with the milk to make a custard.

  2. Pour the custard over the layered fish and crumbs.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

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

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

  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. 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
Set the custard as they heat, binding the fish and crumbs into a sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, keeping the dish moist and tender as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the custard and give the layers a soft, absorbent body.
Haddock
Main protein, cooking through in the custard to give the dish its flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps keep the layers moist while baking.

The step that matters

Baking the custard. Eggs set as the custard heats, so their proteins firm into a cohesive body. Too much heat or time makes them curdle, weep and turn rubbery, so the custard should be just set.

“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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