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Dessert

Cherry Souffle

A light, airy dessert made with cherries, butter, flour, syrups, eggs, lemon juice, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cherry Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Butter a mold and decorate it with the cherries.

Make the custard

  1. Mix flour with a little cold cherry syrup and stir into the hot syrup until it thickens.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and stir into the mixture with lemon juice.

  3. Remove from the stove and let cool.

Steam and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  4. Let it stand in the mold for a few minutes, then turn out.

  5. Serve with sweetened whipped cream or hot cherry juice.

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

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

  2. Cherry + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,301 recipes

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

  3. Syrup + creamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 into foam, they trap air that lifts and gives the soufflé its light structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the thickened base and help it set firmly as it steams, adding richness.
Flour
Thickens the hot cherry syrup into a smooth base that holds the soufflé together.
Cherry syrup
Adds cherry flavour, sweetness and moisture to the base.

The step that matters

Cool the base before folding in the egg whites. If the thickened mixture is still hot, it can deflate the beaten whites and cook them unevenly, so the soufflé may rise poorly and turn heavy. Cooling it first keeps the air in the whites.

Swap the cherry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, syrup, egg, lemon, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, syrup, egg, lemon, cream. 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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