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Salmon Souffle, Cold

A chilled salmon mousse folded with whipped cream and garnished with mayonnaise, cream aspic, crayfish tails, or shrimp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Salmon Souffle, Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Cook the salmon in a mixture of light wine and lemon juice, then remove skin and bones.

  2. Pound the salmon flesh in a mortar.

Make the mousse

  1. Add the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs, chopped and sieved whites, mustard, salt, cayenne, and anchovy essence.

  2. Moisten with ½ cup of the cooking liquid and thicken with gelatine.

  3. Sieve the mixture and fold in the whipped cream.

Set and decorate

  1. Place the mixture in a paper or china case, ensuring it stands above the case and retains its shape.

  2. Chill on ice until firm and cold.

  3. Decorate as desired with mayonnaise, cream aspic, crayfish tails, or shrimp, garnished with chervil.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main body and flavour of the mousse once pounded smooth.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a smooth, airy texture to the mousse.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy body to the salmon mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the salmon.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream after sieving. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped cream, so the mousse stays light. Stirring hard deflates the cream and makes the set texture heavy and dense.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, wine, lemon, egg, pepper, anchovy, cream):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, wine, lemon, egg, pepper, anchovy, cream. 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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