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Kedgeree

A rice and fish dish cooked with butter, eggs, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the rice until tender, then dry and let it cool.

  2. Remove skin and bones from the cold fish, then flake it into a saucepan.

Make the kedgeree

  1. Add the cooled rice to the fish.

  2. Cut the butter into pieces and add it to the mixture.

  3. Season with salt and cayenne to taste.

  4. Stir over heat until hot but do not let it boil.

  5. Beat the eggs lightly and add them to the mixture.

  6. Stir until the eggs are set, then serve.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  2. Rice + fishtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together270 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Fish + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,782 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs flavour while staying separate and fluffy when dried.
Cold fish
Provides the main protein and flavour, flaked through the rice.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the rice and fish as it melts.
Eggs
Set with gentle heat to bind the mixture and add creamy richness.

The step that matters

Stir over heat until hot but do not let it boil. Eggs are added later and need only gentle heat to set softly. Boiling the mixture can overcook the eggs, turning them rubbery and grainy instead of tender and creamy.

“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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