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Fish Soufflee

A steamed fish soufflé made with white fish, lemon juice, milk or stock, butter, flour, eggs, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Soufflee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish and chop it finely.

Make the mixture

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour and milk or stock, cooking until thick while stirring constantly.

  2. Pound this mixture with the eggs, then rub it through a sieve.

  3. Season carefully, then add the cream.

Steam and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into a souffle tin and steam until firm, about 40 to 45 minutes.

  2. Turn onto a hot dish and coat with fish 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

White fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the soufflé once chopped and cooked.
Eggs
Set when heated, giving the soufflé its firm, sliceable structure.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so it holds together before adding eggs.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture and carrying flavour.
Milk or fish stock
Adds moisture and forms the thick base with the flour.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the finished mixture.

The step that matters

Steam until firm. Steam gently and watch for firmness. Excess heat makes egg proteins tighten too quickly, causing a tough, rubbery texture and a dense, uneven set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, milk, butter, cream, flour, egg, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, butter, cream, flour, egg, pepper. 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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