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Dessert

Souffles

A baked dish of beaten egg whites folded into a seasoned base of meat, fish, or fruit, thickened with butter and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Souffles

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, add flour, and cook slightly.

  2. Pour in milk and cook thoroughly until thick.

  3. Add the distinctive ingredients, seasonings, and yolks; mix well.

Build and steam

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour mixture into a prepared souffle tin and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Steam for 40 to 45 minutes until set.

Serve

  1. Allow to shrink, then turn out carefully.

  2. Serve with a suitable sauce.

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

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

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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 a stiff foam, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it steams.
Egg yolks
They enrich the thick base and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that is thickened into a sauce to carry the other ingredients.
Butter
Enriches the base and, with flour, forms the roux that thickens the milk.
Flour or farinaceous substance
Thickens the milk base and gives the soufflé body so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently. Folding keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Stirring or beating them down deflates the mixture, so the soufflé rises less and turns out dense.

“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.

More soufflé recipes

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