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Fish Pate

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 Pate

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.

  1. Mash the desired amount of potatoes with a good piece of butter.

  2. Use the back of 2 silver spoons to form a 2-inch high wall of mashed potatoes inside the rim of a dish.

  3. Make the upper part thinner than the lower, smooth it, and brush with beaten egg.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until hot and slightly colored.

  5. Optionally, decorate the outside with small shapes cut from paste before brushing with egg.

  6. In a mortar, beat the crab with white pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and a few crumbs of bread.

  7. Warm the mixture with gravy thickened with cream or butter and 1 tablespoon of wine, then add a little lemon juice.

  8. Pour the crab mixture into the baked potato walls and serve hot, optionally browning the top with a salamander or garnishing with small claws.

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

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  4. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  5. Butter + crabtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, egg, crab, nutmeg, bread, cream):

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

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

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