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Omelet Souffle

A baked dish of beaten eggs, milk, flour, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Omelet Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, blend together the flour and butter.

  2. Add the milk and heat in a saucepan until it thickens.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar and mix into the thickened milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Set aside until ready to bake, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve hot with 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Thickens with the butter and milk, giving the base structure and body.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the base and softens its texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth base.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the base; whipped whites lift and set the soufflé as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the yolk mixture tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that makes the soufflé rise. Stirring them in vigorously or letting them deflate before baking loses that lift, so fold gently and bake promptly.

“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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