Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Souffle

A sweet soufflé made with bread crumbs, milk, butter, sugar, eggs, and orange or lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Orange Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard base

  1. Grate the rind of the lemons (or oranges) into the bread crumbs.

  2. Boil the milk and sugar together.

  3. Gradually mix the hot milk and sugar with the bread crumbs, adding the butter.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Finish and bake

  1. Add the juice of the fruit and the egg yolks.

  2. Bake in a water bath until the custard is set.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and set it when baked, giving structure to the soufflé.
Bread crumbs
Bulk the base and absorb the milk, giving the custard body and a soft texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the bread crumbs soak up and that the eggs set within.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the custard tender.
Lemons or oranges
Rind and juice add aroma and citrus acidity that brighten the custard.

The step that matters

Bake in a water bath until the custard is set. A water bath surrounds the dish with gentle, even heat, so the eggs set slowly without curdling or cracking on the outside. Baking until set, not just until puffed, ensures the custard holds its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes