Name: Peach Souffle
Ingredients: ½ cup sugar; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; 3 eggs; Peaches (for decoration); Butter (for greasing the dish)

Why it works: Lemon and peach work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 947 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Peach 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.

Prepare

Prepare a pudding dish by greasing it with butter.
Decorate the mould with half peaches.

Make the batter

Beat the yolks of the eggs until light and foamy.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Gently fold the beaten yolks into the egg whites.
Gradually add the sugar and lemon juice, mixing well.

Bake and serve

Pour the mixture into the prepared dish and dust the top with sugar.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.
Serve immediately, with or without sauce.

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.

Lemon + peachtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together947 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Peach + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together860 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and structure as the soufflé sets.
Sugar: Sweetens the soufflé and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that helps stabilise the whipped egg whites and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks with air trapped in them; underbeaten whites collapse, and overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy, so the soufflé fails to rise. Folding gently preserves that trapped air.