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Fish Pudding, Plain

A baked fish pudding made with white fish, forcemeat balls, gravy, and optional herbs or anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and ketchup share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Pudding, Plain

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a basin with paste No. 2, about ½ inch thick.

  2. Wash, dry, and cut the fish into serving pieces.

  3. Add the head, tail, and trimmings to make stock.

  4. Dredge the fish with flour, salt, and pepper, and add herbs or anchovy essence if desired.

  5. Prepare the gravy by straining and thickening it with flour, then enrich with butter.

Pack and bake

  1. Pack the fish firmly in the basin, adding enough gravy to come a third of the way up.

  2. Cover and bake until cooked through.

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 + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White fish
Forms the main body of the pudding, cooking to flaky, tender pieces.
Paste no. 2
Forms the enclosing crust that holds the fish and gravy together while baking.
Flour
Coats the fish and thickens the gravy so it clings rather than running off.
Gravy
Fills gaps between the fish pieces and keeps the filling moist during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it a smoother, rounder flavour.

The step that matters

Pack the fish firmly in the basin, adding enough gravy to come a third of the way up.. Firm packing leaves fewer air gaps, so the pieces stay in place as they cook. The gravy keeps the fish moist and fills spaces, so the filling does not dry out in the oven.

“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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