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Dessert

Mocha Souffle

A light, coffee-flavored soufflé made with butter, flour, coffee, cream, sugar, eggs, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Mocha Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir to combine.

  3. Gradually pour in the hot coffee and cream, stirring until smooth.

  4. Add the salt and sugar, then mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Cook over hot water until the mixture is smooth.

Fold and bake

  1. Remove from heat and gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Add the vanilla and mix gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

  4. Bake in a water bath at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  5. Serve with Mocha sauce.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and make the soufflé rise and turn light.
Egg yolks
Mixed into the base, they add richness and help set the custard-like structure.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the base so it can hold the whipped whites.
Butter
Melted with the flour to form a roux that gives the base body and richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the coffee and cocoa notes.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be stiffly beaten and folded gently so the air they hold is not lost; deflating the mixture prevents the soufflé from rising properly.

“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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