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Dessert

Guava Souffle

A light dessert made by folding guava pulp into beaten egg whites and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Guava Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the souffle

  1. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff.

  2. Gently fold in the sweetened guava pulp.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish or individual molds.

Bake

  1. Place the dish in a pan of hot water and bake until firm.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Guava + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Egg + guavatop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together38 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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff foam that traps air, giving the souffle its light, risen structure.
Guava pulp
Supplies the main flavor and moisture, and its sugar adds sweetness to the mixture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the guava pulp and helps stabilize the whipped structure.

The step that matters

Folding in the guava pulp. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped egg whites intact. Stirring or deflating the foam too much leads to a dense, flat souffle instead of a light, risen one.

Swap the guava

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Guavathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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