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Fish Soufflé
½ lb. cooked chopped fish 6 boiled potatoes 3 heaping tablespoonfuls (3 ozs.) butter 1 teaspoonful anchovy extract 1 teaspoonful made mustard ¼ pint (1/2 cup) thick cream 1/2 lb. cooked chopped fish I oz. (1/2 cup) bread crumbs 3 tablespoonfuls (I oz.) chopped suet (1 oz.) 1 teaspoonful chopped parsley 5 egg whites A few browned bread crumbs Salt and paprika to taste Boil the potatoes and rub them through a sieve while they are hot; mix with them the butter, salt, paprika, anchovy extract, mustard, cream, fish, white bread crumbs, suet, parsley, and the whites of eggs beaten stiffly.
Mix carefully and turn into a well-buttered fireproof soufflé dish; sprinkle the top of the soufflé with the browned bread crumbs and here and there put a little bit of butter; place it on a baking tin and cook in a moderate oven for about forty minutes.
Serve at once.
A potato-bound fish pudding rather than a true soufflé — the egg whites lighten it, but the mashed potato keeps it dense enough to hold a spoon. The transcription has some quirks worth sorting out before you start.
- The duplicated fishThe ingredient list gives both 1½ lb and ½ lb of cooked chopped fish, while the method calls for "fish" only once. This looks like a duplication in the printing or transcription, though which figure was intended is unclear. Pick one; 1½ lb is the safer reading.
- "14 pint"Read this as ¼ pint, which the original itself glosses as ½ cup. That is the British quarter-pint of about 5 fl oz, so a generous half cup of heavy cream.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no figure; "moderate" is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F. Forty minutes at that heat sets the centre without drying the surface; the fish and potato are already cooked, so you are really only setting the egg white and browning the top.
- Anchovy extractAnchovy essence, once sold in bottles alongside mushroom ketchup. Anchovy paste from a tube is the closest current substitute, a scant teaspoon of it, or two or three mashed oil-packed fillets.
- Made mustardSimply prepared mustard from a jar, as opposed to dry mustard powder — English mustard is the intended flavour.
- SuetShredded beef suet, which melts at a higher temperature than butter and keeps the crumb open. Ask a butcher, or use packaged shredded suet; an ounce of cold grated butter will do the job less authentically.
- The hingeSieve the potatoes while genuinely hot and fold the beaten whites in last, with a light hand. Cold potato turns gluey under the masher and will knock the air straight out of the whites.
- Dish and yieldA "fireproof souffle dish" here is any straight-sided ovenproof dish large enough to take the mixture, which is a generous quantity; set it on a baking tin as the recipe directs. The recipe states no yield.
The recipe itself belongs to an older tradition of fish puddings and fish shapes — a way of turning yesterday's boiled cod or salmon into something presentable, stretched with potato and lifted with egg white. The anchovy essence and made mustard are often said to be a characteristic British seasoning pair for bland white fish of the period, doing the work that lemon and herbs would do now; suet in a savoury pudding was equally routine, and its disappearance from home kitchens is a twentieth-century change rather than a culinary judgement.