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Omelet Soufflee

A light, baked omelet soufflé made with egg whites, yolks, lemon juice, powdered sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Omelet Soufflee

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a baking dish with butter.

Make the soufflé

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks.

  3. Gently fold the yolks into the beaten whites.

  4. Add the powdered sugar and lemon juice, stirring carefully.

  5. Heap the mixture into the prepared baking dish.

  6. Dredge the top with powdered sugar.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 15 minutes until light brown.

  2. 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 into stiff peaks to trap air, giving the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Folded into the whites to add richness and flavour while keeping the mixture airy.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the soufflé and browns lightly on the top surface in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Folding the yolks into the whites. Folding gently preserves the air bubbles in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or deflating them vigorously causes the soufflé to collapse and turn dense instead of rising in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

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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