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Dessert

Strawberry Souffle

A light, custard-based dessert made with strawberries, eggs, sugar, and butter, baked into a fluffy souffle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 525 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry 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.

Make the base

  1. Mix strawberry pulp with egg yolks, sugar, butter, cream, milk, flour, and arrowroot until custard-like.

  2. Heat in a saucepan until boiling, then let cool.

Add the whites and bake

  1. Stir in lemon juice, maraschino, and beaten egg whites until frothy.

  2. Fold in sliced strawberries and add a little carmine for color.

  3. Pour mixture into a soufflé dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 30 minutes.

  4. Dredge with fine sugar when nearly done.

  5. Serve with cream and sugar or fruit purée.

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. Flour + arrowroottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together525 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped foam that lifts the soufflé and gives it an airy, light structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and set into a custard that holds the soufflé together.
Flour
Thickens the strawberry base so it can support the rising foam.
Arrowroot
Adds thickening power, giving a smooth, stable base texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the soufflé and balances the tartness of the strawberries.
Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and moisture in the soufflé.

The step that matters

Let the base cool before adding the egg whites. A hot base can cook the egg whites and deflate the foam, so the soufflé rises less. Cooling first keeps the whites light and stable for baking.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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