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Omelette Soufflee

A light, airy omelette made with beaten egg whites folded into a milk, flour, butter, and lemon mixture, baked until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Omelette Soufflee

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. In a tin saucepan, heat the milk until boiling.

  2. Add the flour and stir rapidly until smooth.

  3. Stir in the butter until melted, then remove from heat.

  4. Mix in the egg yolks thoroughly.

  5. Once cooled, add lemon peel or Extract of Lemon, and sugar.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a buttered shallow pudding dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes.

  3. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve immediately.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth panade.
Flour
Thickens the base so it can hold the air folded in later.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and add richness and colour to the finished dish.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiffness, they trap air that makes the soufflé rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Stiff whites hold the air that lifts the mixture. Stirring or deflating them removes that air, so the dish rises less and turns dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, 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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