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Pistachio Souffles

A pistachio soufflé flavored with rose essence and topped with a rose-pink icing.

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 mixture

  1. Grind the pistachios into a fine paste.

  2. In a bowl, combine the pistachio paste with sugar and egg whites.

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

Make the icing

  1. Prepare royal rose-pink icing using the additional egg whites.

Bake

  1. Spoon the mixture onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until lightly colored.

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 nutty flavor and body of the mixture as a fine paste.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture brown lightly in the oven.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lift, holding the mixture together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake in a slow oven until lightly colored. Baking at a low temperature dries the mixture gently and sets it without over-browning. Too high a heat can scorch the sugar and nuts before the centre is set.

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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