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Dessert

Orange Souffle

A sweet orange‑flavored soufflé made with ground rice or flour, butter, milk, sugar, orange rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Orange Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine ground rice or flour and butter.

  2. Pour in the milk sweetened with sugar and flavored with orange rind.

  3. Stir briskly until the mixture boils.

  4. Transfer to a basin and let it cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once cool, add the beaten egg yolks and egg whites.

  2. Pour into a buttered souffle dish.

  3. Tie a band of oiled paper around the top to prevent overflow.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  5. Serve immediately after removing from the oven.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into the base to trap air, which lifts the soufflé as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a rich, custardy structure.
Ground rice or dried flour
Thickens the milk into a stable base that can hold the rising foam.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and smooths the thickened base.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the base, which thickens with the starch.

The step that matters

Stir the base until it boils, then let it cool before adding the eggs. The starch must be fully cooked to thicken the base. Adding beaten eggs to a hot base can scramble them and deflate the foam, so cooling first keeps the whites airy for rising.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, butter, milk, sugar, egg. 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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