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Dessert

Custard Souffle

A light custard-based dessert folded with beaten egg whites and baked until risen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 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 Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the flour and butter.

  3. Gradually add the boiling milk to the flour and butter mixture, cooking for 8 minutes while stirring often.

  4. In another bowl, beat the sugar and egg yolks together, then add this to the cooked mixture and let it cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Once cool, beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 25 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. 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
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks lift the mixture and give the souffle its airy rise.
Flour
Thickens the milk with butter into a cooked base that holds the souffle together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that is thickened and cooked.
Butter
Enriches the base and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the milk.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard base.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff and folded gently so the air is kept; deflating them or letting the base get warm before folding leaves a dense souffle instead of a light one.

“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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