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Dessert

Omelette Souffle

A sweet, lightly baked egg dish with powdered sugar and lemon peel.

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

Omelette Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the eggs

  1. Break the eggs and beat the yolks and whites separately until very light.

  2. Mix the yolks and whites together, then add the powdered sugar and grated lemon peel.

Cook and bake

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then pour in the egg mixture and stir until absorbed.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a buttered plate, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and place in a hot Dutch oven.

  3. Bake until slightly brown, then serve as a dessert.

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. Sugar + lemontop 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).

Sugar and lemon 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

Eggs
Whipped separately, they trap air and give the omelette soufflé its light, airy structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the eggs and dissolves easily, adding sweetness and helping the top take on light browning.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the mixture cook in the pan and brown on the plate.

The step that matters

Beating the yolks and whites separately until very light. Whites must be beaten to a stable foam so they trap air. Underbeaten eggs give a dense result, while overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy and lose their ability to rise and stay light.

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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