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Potato Souffle

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with beaten eggs and cream, folded with egg whites, then baked until risen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Roast the potatoes in their skins until tender.

  2. Peel the potatoes and rub them through a coarse wire sieve.

Make the mixture

  1. Pour the boiling cream over the yolks of the eggs and add the lemon juice and rind.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gently mix the potato puree with the egg yolk mixture and then fold in the egg whites.

  4. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and place it in the oven to rise.

  5. Serve immediately.

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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the soufflé and give it a light, smooth body.
Eggs
Whites trapped as foam lift the mixture, and yolks enrich it and help it set.
Boiling cream
Adds richness and moisture, and warms the yolks gently before mixing.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich potato and cream base.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Egg white foam holds air that makes the soufflé rise. Stirring or deflating it during folding removes that air, so the soufflé will rise less and turn dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, cream. 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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