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Fish Mould

A baked fish cake made with flaked fish, butter, breadcrumbs, cream, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Mould

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Heat the flaked fish in butter until hot.

  2. Pound the fish smoothly and mix in the breadcrumbs soaked in cream or milk.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, coralline pepper, and nutmeg or mace if desired.

  4. Add the well-beaten yolks and whites of the eggs and mix well.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a generously buttered basin.

  2. Bake, boil, or steam for 35 to 40 minutes.

  3. Turn out and serve with anchovy or any nice fish 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flaked fish
Forms the main body and bulk of the mould.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it firm when heated.
Fresh white breadcrumbs
Absorb the cream or milk and help hold the fish together.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and keeps the fish from sticking to the basin.
Single cream or new milk
Moistens the breadcrumbs and keeps the mould tender.

The step that matters

Bake, boil, or steam for 35 to 40 minutes. The eggs set as they heat. Cooking too long or too hot forces out moisture and makes the mould dry and rubbery, so check it as the time nears its end.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, cream, pepper, egg):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, cream, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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