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Dessert

Custard Soufflé

A baked custard soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, and sugar, served with a creamy or foamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Custard Soufflé

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Melt butter.

  2. Add flour and gradually hot milk.

  3. When well thickened, pour onto yolks of eggs beaten until thick and lemon-colored, and mix with sugar.

  4. Cool.

Fold and bake

  1. Cut and fold in whites of eggs beaten stiff and dry.

  2. Turn into buttered pudding dish.

  3. Bake from thirty to thirty-five minutes in slow oven.

Serve

  1. Take from oven and serve at once; if not served immediately it is sure to fall.

  2. Serve with creamy or foamy sauce.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

833Calories
27 gProtein
26 gFat
120 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 custard while whites, beaten stiff, lift the soufflé as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a stable base that holds the risen structure.
Butter
Enriches the base and adds fat for a tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that flour thickens into the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard deflates the mixture and leads to a flat result.

“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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