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Soup

Cream of Fish

A steamed fish soup made with haddock, bread crumbs, milk, cream, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and cream work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 181 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cream of Fish

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Scrape and pound the fish in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Soak the bread crumbs in boiling milk, then mix with the pounded fish using a fork.

  3. Add salt, white pepper, celery salt, and cream; mix well.

  4. Whip the egg white until stiff and gently fold it into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Half-fill two buttered cups with the mixture and cover with paper.

  2. Steam in a pan with enough water to come halfway up the cups for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with white sauce or oysters.

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. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Bread + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. White pepper + celerytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together853 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock, cod, or sole
Provides the main protein, which sets into a delicate, tender body when steamed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the boiling milk and add body, helping the mixture hold together.
Egg white
Whipped to stiffness, it traps air and lightens the texture as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the steamed fish tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white. Whipped egg white is easily deflated by stirring. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles, which lighten the texture as the mixture sets during steaming.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, bread, milk, celery, cream, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, bread, milk, celery, cream, 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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