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Salt Fish Soufflé

A baked potato and salt fish soufflé with beaten egg whites folded in.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salt Fish Soufflé

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pare the potatoes and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the water and mash the potatoes very fine.

  3. Mix the mashed potatoes thoroughly with the fish.

  4. Add butter, seasoning, and hot milk.

  5. Beat 2 eggs well and stir into the mixture.

Bake and brown

  1. Heap the mixture into a serving dish and place in the oven for 10 minutes.

  2. Beat the whites of the remaining 2 eggs to stiff peaks, add ¼ teaspoon salt, then fold in the yolks.

  3. Spread the egg mixture over the fish dish and return to the oven to brown.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  5. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed starch that forms the soft body of the dish.
Eggs
Set and bind the mixture, and the whipped whites lift it into a soufflé-like top.
Salt fish
Provides the main savoury flavour and salty character of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening texture and aiding browning.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and makes the mashed potato mixture smooth and loose.

The step that matters

Beating and folding the egg whites. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently so the air they hold is not lost. Deflated whites produce a flat, dense top instead of a light, risen crust.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, egg, pepper, butter. 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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