Skip to main content
Main

Fish Souffle

A baked fish dish made with a white sauce, shredded fish, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fish Souffle

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.

Make the base

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in the milk until smooth.

  2. Cool the sauce and then stir in the shredded fish.

Make the souffle

  1. Separate the egg yolk and white; beat both until light.

  2. Add the yolk to the fish mixture, then gently fold in the beaten egg white.

  3. Pour the mixture into a patty dish placed in a pan of water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes or until puffed and brown.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the white sauce and carries flavour while the flour thickens it.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a white sauce that holds the fish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
Shredded fish
Provides the main flavour and bulk of the souffle mixture.
Egg
Yolk enriches the base, while the beaten white traps air to lift the souffle as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites. Stirring or deflating the mixture makes the souffle rise less and turn dense when baked.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes