Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple Souffle

A steamed pineapple soufflé made with flour, butter, milk, cream, eggs, pineapple, and flavored with pineapple juice, Madeira wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pineapple Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan over medium heat, gently blend the flour and butter.

  2. Add the milk and remove the pan from the heat.

  3. Stir in the thick cream, egg yolks, chopped pineapple, and essence of pineapple.

Assemble and steam

  1. Fold in the whipped egg whites carefully.

  2. Prepare a mold and pour the mixture in.

  3. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out the souffle and serve with a sauce made from pineapple juice, Madeira wine, and sugar.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + pineappletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together885 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set firm when steamed, adding richness and body.
Flour
Blended with butter and milk to form a thickened base that holds the soufflé together.
Butter
Combined with flour to make a roux, adding richness and smoothness to the base.
Pineapple
Provides the main flavour and some moisture; its juice is also used in the sauce.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the soufflé heavy and less risen.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, cream, egg, madeira wine, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Pineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipesPineapple CreamPineapple Cream58 recipesPineapple JellyPineapple Jelly39 recipes