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Dessert

Pecan Souffle

A baked dessert made with sugar, egg yolks, ground pecans, vanilla, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pecans and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,691 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pecan 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 batter

  1. In a bowl, mix granulated sugar with the well-beaten yolks of the eggs.

  2. Add ground pecans and vanilla extract to the mixture.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased pan and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Pecans + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,691 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Egg + pecanstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,280 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 into foam, they trap air that lifts the souffle as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Ground pecans
Add body, fat and nutty flavour to the batter.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the yolks when beaten with them.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, so the souffle rises less and turns dense.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansthe original

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