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Little Curry Souffles

A savory curry soufflé made with onions, tomatoes, curry powder, fish stock, and cold cooked fish, finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Little Curry Souffles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Slice, peel, and fry the onions in butter with bay leaf and thyme for 15 minutes.

  2. Add tomatoes, curry powder, coralline pepper, tamarinds, lemon juice, coconut, anchovies, carmine, and fish stock.

  3. Simmer the mixture until tender.

  4. Dissolve the gelatin in the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture through a tammy.

  6. Stir in the cold cooked fish and whipped cream.

Set and serve

  1. Prepare souffle cases with a band of white paper around them.

  2. Pour the curry mixture into the cases.

  3. Chill the cases in the ice box for about an hour.

  4. Remove the paper bands.

  5. Pipe anchovy cream on top.

  6. Serve.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Tamarind + coconuttop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its soufflé shape when chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds air and lightness, giving the mixture a softer, creamier texture.
Butter
Fat that softens and sweetens the onions while carrying the aromatic flavours.
Onions
Form the sweet, savoury base that the curry flavour is built on.
Anchovies
Add savoury depth and salt to the curry base.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, helping to balance the spices.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin in the mixture. Gelatine must be fully dissolved in a warm mixture before chilling; undissolved granules leave a grainy texture and uneven setting, so the soufflé may fail to hold its shape.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, thyme, tomato, pepper, tamarind, lemon, coconut):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Okrafits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, thyme, tomato, pepper, tamarind, lemon, coconut. 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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