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Steamed Vanilla Souffle Pudding

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Steamed Vanilla Souffle Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Butter a 1½ pint tin well using your fingers.

  2. Fold a piece of paper to make a band around the tin, allowing 2 inches to stand above the tin.

  3. Butter the top part of the paper with a knife and tie it around the tin with string.

  4. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a stewpan over the fire.

  5. Remove the stewpan from the heat and place it on a piece of paper on the table.

  6. Add 1 ounce of flour to the melted butter and mix well.

  7. Stir in 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar.

  8. Add ½ cup of milk and return the stewpan to the heat, stirring until thickened.

  9. Remove from heat and add the yolks of 3 eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  10. In a separate bowl, whip the whites of 4 eggs with ¼ teaspoon of salt until stiff.

  11. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the mixture.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

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

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