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Whiting Cream

A light fish souffle made with whiting, butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, cream, and seasoning.

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.

  3. Add the milk and stir until it boils and pulls away from the sides of the pan.

  4. Let the sauce 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.

  3. Gently fold in the slightly whipped cream.

  4. Pour the mixture into the souffle mold.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover with buttered paper.

  2. Steam gently for 40 minutes.

  3. 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
Provides the main body and flavour of the soufflé.
Butter
Enriches the panada and adds richness to the soufflé.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a panada that gives the soufflé structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the panada, adding moisture and softness.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness and setting structure.
Cream
Lightens the mixture and adds moisture when folded in whipped.

The step that matters

Fold in the cream gently. Whipped cream holds air that gives the soufflé its lift. Vigorous stirring deflates the bubbles, so the soufflé steams up heavy and dense instead of light.

“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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