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Dessert

Crayfish Pudding

A savory pudding made from boiled crayfish, butter, anchovies, lobster spawn, eggs, and soaked French roll crumbs, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Crayfish Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crayfish

  1. Boil the crayfish in water with salt and vinegar.

  2. Pick the meat from the tails and claws.

Make the custard

  1. In a mortar, combine the crayfish meat, butter, anchovies, and lobster spawn, then pound until smooth.

  2. Pass through a fine sieve.

  3. In a bowl, add the eggs one at a time, mixing each thoroughly before adding the next.

  4. Incorporate the soaked French roll crumbs into the mixture and blend well.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a mold with clarified butter using a pastry brush and fill it with the crayfish mixture.

  2. Place the mold in a pot of simmering water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the mold, then cover and cook for 1 hour.

  3. Turn the pudding out onto a dish and serve with red Italian sauce around the edge.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Crayfish + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Crayfish + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding into a firm, sliceable structure as they cook.
Crayfish meat
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the pudding's body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the mixture.
French roll crumbs
Soaked in cream, they add moisture and lighten the texture of the pudding.
Anchovies
Contribute a salty, savoury depth that rounds out the seafood flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking the eggs into the mixture. Adding eggs one at a time and mixing each in fully keeps the mixture smooth and emulsified. Eggs set with gentle heat, so a steady simmer rather than a hard boil helps the pudding cook evenly without curdling or becoming rubbery.

“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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