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Cherry Souffle

A steamed dessert made with canned cherries, flour, cherry syrup, lemon juice, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,301 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cherry Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter a mold well.

  2. Decorate the mold with the cherries.

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour with a little cold cherry syrup.

  2. Stir the mixture into the hot syrup.

  3. Stir until thickened.

  4. Beat the yolks of the eggs.

  5. Stir the beaten yolks into the mixture along with the lemon juice.

  6. Remove the mixture from the stove.

  7. Let it cool.

Finish and steam

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  4. Let it stand in the mold for a few minutes.

  5. Turn it out of the mold.

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. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + cherrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,623 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the base and egg whites, folded in, lighten the soufflé and give it structure as it sets.
Flour
Thickens the cherry syrup into a stable base that holds the soufflé together.
Canned cherries
Decorate the mold and add fruit flavor and moisture to the finished dish.
Cherry syrup
Provides the liquid base and sweet cherry flavor for the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet cherry flavor.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only if they are beaten well and folded in gently. Stirring them vigorously deflates the foam, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, syrup, lemon, egg, 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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