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Dessert

Omelet Souffle

A sweet omelet souffle made with eggs, powdered sugar, orange flower water, and butter, finished with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Omelet Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  2. Add powdered sugar and a little orange flower water to the yolks and stir well.

  3. Whip the egg whites until very firm.

  4. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the yolk mixture.

Cook the omelet

  1. Heat the butter in a frying pan until hot but not burning.

  2. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and cook over high heat.

  3. Once cooked, turn the omelet onto a dish.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the dish on hot ashes and cover with a lid filled with hot coals for 4-5 minutes.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and glaze with a hot shovel.

  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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
Whipped whites give the omelet its light, airy structure, while the yolks add richness and color.
Powdered sugar
Adds gentle sweetness to the yolks and, sprinkled on top, caramelizes to a glossy finish.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the omelet and adds a rich, browned flavor to the base.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped whites into the yolks. Whites hold air only when whipped firm; folding gently keeps that trapped air, which is what lifts the omelet. Stirring or deflating the mixture makes the result dense and flat.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter. 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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