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Fish Souffle

A steamed fish souffle made with fish, butter, flour, milk or water, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Fish Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Remove skin and bones from the fish.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, add the milk or water, and cook until it pulls away from the pan, stirring constantly.

  3. Pound the panada, raw fish, and egg yolk together, season well, and pass through a sieve.

Make the soufflé

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff and gently fold it into the fish mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered souffle dish and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Steam gently for 40 minutes until firm.

Serve

  1. Invert onto a hot dish and serve with a good white sauce.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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

Fish
Provides the main body and flavour of the soufflé once cooked and set.
Butter
Enriches the panada and adds richness and flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a panada that gives the mixture structure.
Milk
Forms a smooth sauce with the flour and keeps the mixture moist.
Egg
The whites are beaten to add lift, and the yolk binds the mixture.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Stiff whites hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring vigorously would deflate the mixture and leave it dense.

“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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