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Kedgeree

A fish and rice dish with butter, egg, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Kedgeree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the rice.

  2. Boil the rice.

  3. Dry the rice.

  4. Remove skin and bones from the fish.

  5. Chop the fish roughly.

  6. Separate the egg white from the yolk.

  7. Chop the egg white roughly.

  8. Rub the yolk through a wire sieve.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the rice, fish, and egg white to the butter.

  3. Heat thoroughly.

  4. Season with cayenne pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

  5. Serve on a hot dish.

  6. Decorate with the sieved yolk.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Finnan haddock
Provides the main flesh and flavour of the dish, cooked fish being flaked into the rice.
Rice
Forms the bulk of the dish and absorbs the melted butter, giving it body.
Butter
Coats the rice and fish, adding richness and carrying the seasonings.
Egg
White is chopped into the mix for texture; sieved yolk gives a fine, rich garnish.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly. The rice and fish are already cooked, so they only need to be reheated. Heating them fully until piping hot makes the dish safe to serve and evenly warm, without drying the fish.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, rice, butter, egg, pepper. 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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