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Dessert

Lemon Souffle

A light, airy dessert made from egg yolks, sugar, lemon zest, and egg whites, baked into a souffle and served with a lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lemon Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the souffle

  1. Beat the egg yolks with sugar and grated lemon rind until well combined.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites and lemon juice gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish and bake for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Beat together 3 eggs, lemon juice, and grated lemon rind until smooth for the sauce.

  2. Serve the souffle with the lemon sauce on top.

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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  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 + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Enrich the base with fat and richness, and add body to the custard-like mixture.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they trap air to give the souffle its light, risen structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilise the beaten yolks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air only while they are whole and fluffy. Vigorous stirring deflates them, so the souffle will rise less and turn dense when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Pumpkinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, sauce. 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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