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Dessert

Souffle of Eggs

A light egg soufflé flavored with brandy, lemon peel, cinnamon, and dried cherries, served with a butter, sugar, and white wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Souffle of Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat for 5 minutes.

  2. Whisk in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the brandy and the strained milk, boiled with lemon peel and cinnamon, until you have a light batter.

Prepare and cook

  1. Grease a plain tin mold with butter and stick dried cherries around the inside.

  2. Pour the cooled soufflé mixture into the mold.

  3. Place the mold in boiling water over heat until the mixture is set.

Serve

  1. Gently turn the soufflé out of the mold onto a serving plate.

  2. Serve with a sauce made from butter, sugar, and white wine, and garnish with preserved apricots if desired.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Provide structure and set the soufflé as they cook, giving it lift and body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so it holds together as a batter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the batter a smooth, tender texture.
Milk
Supplies liquid that turns the batter into a pourable mixture that sets with heat.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Cooking the mold in boiling water until set. Gentle, steady heat lets the egg proteins set evenly without curdling or toughening. Overheating or rushing can make the custard grainy and cause it to collapse when turned out.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, brandy, milk, cinnamon, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, brandy, milk, cinnamon, sauce. 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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