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Fish Souffle

A baked fish soufflé made with whisked egg whites, fish, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Whiting and anchovy share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 82 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Melt butter with flour, anchovy essence, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Add egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Gradually stir in cold milk and cook over medium heat until the mixture boils.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in cream and finely chopped fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

  2. Pour mixture into a souffle dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Whiting + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Egg whites
Whipped stiff and folded in, they trap air and give the soufflé its rise and light texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help set the custard structure as it bakes.
Butter
Fat that is melted with flour to form the roux that thickens the base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth base that supports the rising foam.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the base, which thickens as it boils.
Whiting or other fish
Provides the main flavour and body of the soufflé.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the whites leaves a dense, flat result.

“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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