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Fish Soufele

A steamed fish soufflé made with fish, flour, butter, stock or milk, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Fish Soufele

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and mix in the flour over medium heat until smooth.

  2. Add the fish stock or milk and stir until free from lumps.

Prepare the fish mixture

  1. Finely shred the uncooked fish and add it to the sauce along with pepper, salt, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

  2. Pound the mixture in a mortar and then rub it through a sieve.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased basin, filling it halfway, and cover with greased paper.

  2. Steam for 20 minutes until firm.

  3. Carefully turn out onto a plate and 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it steams.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help set the mixture as it cooks, adding richness and body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce base that holds the fish.
Butter
Forms the roux with the flour and adds richness and flavour to the base.
Fish
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the soufflé's body.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded in gently. Stirring or deflating them loses the trapped air, so the soufflé will not rise and turn out light.

“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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