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Kedgeree De Poissou

A fish and rice dish with butter, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Kedgeree De Poissou

Ingredients

Directions

Make the kedgeree

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

  2. Add the boiled rice and lobster, mixing well.

  3. Incorporate the cold fish and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper.

  5. Moisten with a little maitre d'hotel sauce and stir over heat until hot.

Serve

  1. Serve on small squares of buttered toast.

  2. Garnish with chopped egg yolks, parsley, and shredded egg whites.

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. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Rice + parsleytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,762 recipes

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

  4. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  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

Boiled rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the butter and sauce for a soft, moist texture.
Lobster
Provides the main seafood flavour and sweetness that defines the dish.
Cold white fish
Adds flaky texture and a mild savoury body throughout the rice.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture that binds the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the rice stay moist.

The step that matters

Moisten and stir over heat until hot. Heating the mixture gently warms it through without drying the rice or overcooking the flaked fish and eggs. Too much heat can toughen the fish and make the rice dry, while too little leaves the dish lukewarm and the sauce unevenly distributed.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, lobster, fish, egg, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, lobster, fish, egg, pepper, sauce. 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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