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Soft Roe a LA Soyer

A baked dish of soft roe, mushroom, toast, butter, cheese, breadcrumbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Soft Roe a LA Soyer

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Place half the roe on top of the buttered toast.

  2. Put the peeled mushroom on top, then add salt and pepper to taste along with a little piece of butter.

  3. Add the other half of the roe on top of the mushroom.

  4. Sprinkle with cayenne pepper, grated cheese, and breadcrumbs, then add another piece of butter.

Bake

  1. Place everything in a paper bag, seal it, and place on a grid.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for ten minutes.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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

Soft roe
Provides the rich, delicate, creamy filling that forms the main body of the dish.
Buttered toast
Forms the base that holds the filling and soaks up melted butter during baking.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the topping brown as it melts.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb melted butter and crisp in the oven, adding a crunchy topping.

The step that matters

Sealing the paper bag. The sealed bag traps steam around the roe so it cooks gently and stays moist. If the bag is not sealed, the steam escapes and the roe can dry out or cook unevenly.

“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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