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Dessert

Orange Souffle

A light dessert made by baking beaten egg whites with powdered sugar and orange juice in hollowed orange skins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. 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.

Prepare

  1. Carefully hollow out as many oranges as there are servings, avoiding thin scraping of the skin.

Make the soufflé mixture

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding the powdered sugar until very sweet.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolk and mix in the orange juice.

  3. Gently fold the orange juice mixture into the beaten egg whites.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the orange skins with the mixture, overflowing slightly.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes.

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 + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Egg + orangetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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 into foam that traps air, giving the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps enrich the base, adding fat and body to the mixture.
Powdered sugar
Stabilises the whipped whites and adds sweetness to the soufflé.
Orange juice
Adds moisture and bright citrus acidity and aroma to the soufflé base.

The step that matters

Folding the juice mixture into the whites. Folding gently preserves the air bubbles in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or beating hard deflates the foam, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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.

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