Name: Coffee Souffle
Ingredients: 2 ounces good coffee, newly roasted; ½ pint boiling milk; 2 teaspoons potato flour; pounded loaf sugar to taste; 1½ tablespoons pale brandy; 4 egg yolks; 6 egg whites

Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Coffee Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Grind the coffee and pour boiling milk over it. Stir well and let it sit covered for at least an hour.
Strain the coffee mixture. Mix potato flour with a little coffee until smooth.
Add the rest of the coffee to the potato flour mixture and stir over heat until it thickens.
Once cold, add brandy, egg yolks, and then fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

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.

Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,202 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Coffee + potatotop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together167 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, milk, flour, sugar, brandy, egg):

Arrowrootfits better
Sweet potatofits about as well
Potatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, milk, flour, sugar, brandy, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.