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Dessert

Pistachio Souffles

A light pistachio dessert made by folding pistachio paste with sugar and whipped egg whites, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and rose work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 135 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pistachio Souffles

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.

Prepare the base

  1. Grind the pistachios into a fine paste.

  2. In a bowl, mix the pistachio paste with fine sugar.

Make the soufflé

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Fold the whipped egg whites into the mixture.

  3. Add a few drops of essence of roses and mix gently.

  4. Spoon the mixture into molds.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until set.

Make the icing

  1. Prepare rose-pink icing with the remaining egg whites.

  2. Color the icing as desired.

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. Pistachio + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together135 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Pistachio + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + rosetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pistachios
Provide the main flavor and structure of the soufflé base as a fine paste.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the mixture. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites intact. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the pistachio

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiothe original
  3. Walnutfits less well
  4. Pecansfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, rose. 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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