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Moulded Halibut

Moulded halibut is a baked fish dish made with halibut, bread crumbs, cream, salt, pepper, onion juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Moulded Halibut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Pound the halibut very fine and pass it through a sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Cook the bread crumbs with the cream to form a smooth paste.

  2. Gradually add the paste to the fish pulp along with salt, white pepper or paprika, and onion juice.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and bake in a pan of hot water until firm.

  2. Serve with hollandaise, béchamel, or tomato sauce.

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

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

  2. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. White pepper + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Halibut
Forms the main body of the mold, providing the substance and flavor of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Cooked with cream into a paste that binds the fish and helps give a tender texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the mixture soft and smooth when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they set on baking to give the mold its firm, light structure.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites. Those bubbles expand and then set during baking, giving the mold its lightness; overmixing deflates them and makes the result dense.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, cream, onion, 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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