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Whiting Cream

A souffle made with whiting, butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Whiting Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Butter a small plain souffle mold.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, then add the milk and stir until it boils and pulls away from the sides of the pan. Let it cool.

Make the mixture

  1. Remove the fish from the bone and pound it in a mortar with the panada, egg yolk, and seasoning.

  2. Rub the mixture through a sieve into a basin and fold in the slightly whipped cream.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the souffle mold, cover with buttered paper, and steam gently for 40 minutes.

  2. Turn out the souffle and, if desired, pour white fish sauce over and around it.

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

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

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

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

  3. Whiting + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Whiting or other fish
Forms the main body of the soufflé, giving it its flavour and substance.
Butter
Enriches the panada and greases the mold so the soufflé releases cleanly.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a panada that gives the mixture structure and body.
Milk
Combines with the flour to form the panada, adding moisture and softness.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the fish mixture into a smooth, set texture.
Cream
Folded in lightly whipped, it adds moisture and a tender, airy texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream gently. Whipped cream holds air that gives the soufflé its lightness. Overmixing deflates it, leaving a dense result once steamed.

“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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