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Fish Souffle

A steamed fish souffle made with haddock, white butter sauce, egg whites, white pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Remove the fish from the bones and press it through a fine sieve with the white butter sauce.

Make the soufflé

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently mix them with the fish and sauce.

  2. Season with white pepper and coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Steam the mixture for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with additional white butter sauce made from the fish bones poured over the top.

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. Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Haddock
Provides the main body of the soufflé as a flaky, protein-rich base.
White butter sauce
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the mousse-like mixture tender and smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped egg whites hold the air that lifts the soufflé. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the mixture stays dense. Fold gently, in stages, to keep the lightness.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, sauce, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, sauce, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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