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Mushroom Souffle

A baked mushroom soufflé made with butter, flour, mushroom liquor, cream, mushrooms, eggs, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushroom Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour.

  3. Gradually add the mushroom liquor and cream, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Beat the egg yolks slightly and stir them into the sauce.

  5. Cook the mixture for 2-3 minutes.

  6. Add the chopped mushrooms and remove from heat.

Bake and serve

  1. When slightly cool, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and place it in a pan of hot water.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce and whites, beaten stiff, give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Butter
Fat that enriches the base and helps form the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth sauce that holds the soufflé base together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the sauce, giving a softer, creamier texture.
Mushroom liquor
Adds moisture and concentrated mushroom flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that makes a soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard or adding whites to a warm base can deflate the mixture and leave it dense.

“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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