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Sweet Potato Souffle

A baked sweet potato souffle made with mashed sweet potatoes, sweet cream, butter, salt, white pepper, eggs, and baked until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Boil and mash the sweet potatoes.

  2. Add sweet cream, butter, salt, and white pepper; beat until light.

  3. Add the yolks of the well-beaten eggs and mix well.

Bake

  1. Let the mixture cool slightly, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a souffle dish placed in a pan of hot water.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. White pepper + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and moisture, forming the soft body of the souffle.
Eggs
Set the mixture when baked, and the whites add lift and a light, airy structure.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the souffle tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten stiff, and folding gently keeps that air in. Deflating the mixture by stirring or folding too hard leads to a flat, dense souffle. Letting the base cool slightly first helps prevent the whites from collapsing in the hot mixture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, cream, butter, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, cream, butter, egg. 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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