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Pouding Soufflé Mousseline

A lemon custard soufflé with folded egg whites, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pouding Soufflé Mousseline

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Combine sugar and half‑melted butter in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Gradually add egg yolks and cornstarch, stirring until thickened like custard.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat and mix in lemon zest and juice.

  4. Cool the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Fold and fill the molds

  1. Fold in whipped egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into greased and floured dome‑shaped molds.

  3. Place the molds in a pot with water up to one-third of their height, then cover the molds.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for 35 minutes.

  2. Serve immediately after removing from the oven.

  3. Serve with lemon custard sauce on the bottom of the serving plate.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness and color.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lift the batter and give the soufflé its airy rise.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard base so it can hold the whipped whites.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tart lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavor.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. Egg white foam traps air that makes the soufflé rise. Vigorous stirring knocks out that air, so the batter bakes up dense and flat instead of light.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour. 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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