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Dessert

Custard Souffle

A baked custard soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Custard 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 custard base

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Beat in the flour, then gradually pour in the boiling hot milk.

  3. Cook in a double boiler for about 5 minutes, stirring often.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until thick, add the sugar, and stir into the cooking mixture.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool.

Bake and serve

  1. About 30 minutes before serving, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Bake in a buttered pudding dish at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately with a creamy 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard base, and whites are beaten to add lift to the soufflé.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture into a stable base that holds the soufflé together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and richness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor in the starting base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the custard base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the batter leaves a dense, flat result.

“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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