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Fish Pudding

A steamed fish pudding made with eggs, milk, flour, butter, and cod, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pot, slightly thicken the milk with flour over low heat.

  2. Remove from heat and add eggs, stirring briskly.

  3. Stir in the chopped cod and season with salt and pepper.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a covered mold and steam for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with Hollandaise or Lobster Sauce.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard into a firm, sliceable pudding when heated.
Flour
Thickens the milk so it can hold the fish and eggs in suspension.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs set into a tender custard.
Boiled cod
Provides the main fish flavour and body of the pudding.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs off the heat. Eggs can scramble if they meet very hot liquid, so the pot is removed from the heat and the eggs are stirred briskly to blend them in smoothly before steaming sets the pudding.

“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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