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Fish Pudding

A baked dish of chopped fish mixed with thickened milk, flour, butter, pepper, and sea salt, topped with crumbs.

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. Remove bones from the cold fish and chop it into fine bits.

Make the custard

  1. Thicken boiling milk with flour mixed with cold milk to form a batter.

  2. Stir the fish into the thickened milk and season with pepper, butter, and coarse sea salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a pudding dish and cover the top with cracker or bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the top is nicely browned.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  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

Cold fish
Provides the main body and flavor of the pudding.
Milk
Forms the moist, creamy base that sets as it thickens.
Flour
Thickens the boiling milk into a smooth batter that holds the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and a softer, smoother mouthfeel to the mixture.
Cracker crumbs or bread crumbs
Forms a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Mixing flour with cold milk before adding it to boiling milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, since its starch granules gel unevenly. Blending it smoothly with cold milk first lets the starch disperse so the batter thickens evenly.

“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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