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Fish Pudding

A baked dish of haddock mixed with mashed potatoes, beaten egg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a pie dish with butter and coat the sides and bottom with bread crumbs.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the haddock, then remove the fish from the bones while hot.

  2. Cook and mash the potatoes with milk and butter.

  3. Mix the fish with the mashed potatoes, season with pepper and salt, and add the beaten egg.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish, sprinkle with bread crumbs and small pieces of butter.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Haddock + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together171 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

Haddock
Provides the main flaky body and savory flavor of the pudding.
Potatoes
Mashed, they bind the fish and give the filling a soft, moist texture.
Egg
Sets when baked, holding the fish and potato mixture together in a firm pudding.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture in the filling and helps the top brown.
Bread crumbs
Sprinkled on top, they brown in the oven to form a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Remove the fish from the bones while hot. Hot haddock flakes off the bones easily. As it cools the flesh firms and clings to the bones, making bones harder to remove and leaving more fragments in the filling.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, egg, bread, pepper. 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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