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Fish Custard

A custard made with milk, butter, pepper, salt, flaked fish, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fish Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. In a pan, heat the milk with butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Add the flaked fish and heat until hot.

Thicken with eggs

  1. Stir in the eggs and cook over low heat until thickened like custard.

  2. Keep the fish in flakes while stirring.

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

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Milk + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a custard.
Eggs
Set when heated gently, thickening the milk into a custard texture.
Cooked fish
Provides the main protein and flaky texture throughout the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer mouthfeel in the custard.

The step that matters

Stir in the eggs over low heat. Egg proteins set gently at moderate temperatures. High heat or boiling makes them tighten too fast, causing curdling and a grainy texture. Low heat with constant stirring gives a smooth, thickened custard.

“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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