Skip to main content
Main

Oyster Souffle

A light, airy dish made with whitefish, oysters, eggs, and cream, baked in a soufflé.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Whiting and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 236 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Oyster Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Skin the whitings, remove all the meat from the bones, and pound it in a mortar.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and cook briefly without browning.

  3. Moisten with the milk and oyster liquor, stirring briskly until smooth, then add the cream.

  4. Cook a little longer, stirring continuously.

  5. Remove the gills from the oysters, cut them into dice, and add to the mixture.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then mix in the yolks of the eggs and anchovy essence.

Make the souffle and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Fill a well-buttered soufflé dish three-quarters full and steam for about 45 minutes.

  3. Remove from the mold and serve with a 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. Whiting + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped as stiff foam give the souffle its lift; yolks enrich the base and help set it.
Whitings
Provide the main fish body and delicate texture of the souffle.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth base that holds the mixture together.
Butter
Cooked with the flour to form a roux, adding richness and a smooth, stable base.
Milk
Moistens the roux into a creamy sauce that carries the fish and oysters.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and soft pieces of seafood throughout the souffle.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks hold air that makes the souffle rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the foam and leaves a dense 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.

You might also like

Mock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes