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Dessert

Cold Souffle Pudding D LA Princesse

A chilled gelatin-based pudding made with custard, apricot preserve, orange juice, sugar, lemon juice, and cochineal, folded with stiff egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Cold Souffle Pudding D LA Princesse

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Melt gelatin in ½ cup cream over boiling water until dissolved.

  2. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs and mix with the cream.

  3. Cook the custard in a double boiler until thickened, do not boil.

Finish and set

  1. Pour custard into a bowl and add apricot preserve, orange juice, sugar, lemon juice, and cochineal.

  2. Beat the whites of 4 eggs until stiff and fold them gently into the mixture.

  3. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until set.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Apricot + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  5. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the pudding its light, soufflé-like texture.
Egg yolks
Cooked into the custard, they thicken the base and add richness.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Apricot preserve
Adds fruit flavor and sweetness to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the tart citrus.

The step that matters

Cook the custard without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they heat but curdle and turn grainy if they boil, so the custard must be cooked gently in a double boiler until it just coats a spoon.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, orange, sugar, lemon. 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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