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Fish-roe Souffles

A baked dish of herring roe mixed with 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 the herring roes, then pound and strain them.

  2. Season the roes with salt, pepper, mace, and nutmeg.

Make the soufflé

  1. Add butter and egg yolks, and mix well.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in ramekin cups at 400°F (200°C) for about 5 minutes.

  2. 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Herring roes
Provide the main flavour and the rich, savoury body of the soufflé base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and add richness and some setting structure once cooked.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rich mouthfeel in the roe base.

The step that matters

Fold the whisked egg whites into the roe mixture. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the soufflé heavy and flat instead of rising in the oven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, pepper, 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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