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Dessert

Bread Crumb Souffle

A sweet souffle made with sugar, eggs, bread crumbs, cinnamon, allspice or cloves, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bread Crumb Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat together sugar and eggs until very foamy.

  2. Add bread crumbs, cinnamon, allspice or cloves, and baking powder.

Bake

  1. Place the dish into a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1½ hours.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Bread + cinnamontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,705 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Bread + allspicetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together679 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Trap air when beaten, giving the souffle its light structure and lift as it sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps hold the beaten egg foam steady.
Bread crumbs
Add body and absorb moisture, giving a soft, tender crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the souffle rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the sugar and eggs until very foamy. The air whipped into the eggs is what makes the souffle rise and turn light. If the mixture is under-beaten, it will be dense and flat after baking.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, bread, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, bread, cinnamon. 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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