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Fish-roe Souffles

A baked soufflé made from herring roe, butter, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Fish-roe Souffles

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 the roe

  1. Blanch, pound, and strain the herring roes.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

Make the soufflé

  1. Add butter and egg yolks; mix well.

  2. Whisk egg whites until stiff, then fold into the roe mixture.

  3. Pour into ramekin cups and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 5 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately after removing from the oven.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

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

  5. Roe + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring roes
Provides the main flavor and body of the soufflé base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and give the soufflé its rise and light texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and add richness and binding to the roe mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, softer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the roe mixture. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites intact. Deflating them makes the soufflé heavy and limits how much it can rise in the oven.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, mace, nutmeg, butter, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, mace, nutmeg, butter, 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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