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Dessert

Custard Souffle

A light custard-based soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg, baked until risen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Custard 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.

Make the custard base

  1. Stir the butter and flour into a smooth paste in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the boiling milk.

  3. Cook the mixture for 8 minutes while stirring often.

  4. Beat together the sugar, nutmeg, and egg yolks in another bowl.

  5. Add the sugar mixture to the cooked batter and let cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish and bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Serve hot with a creamy 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.

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

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Egg whites trapped by folding give the soufflé its light, risen structure, while yolks enrich the base.
Flour
Flour cooked with butter and milk thickens the base into a stable custard that holds the air.
Butter
Butter combined with the flour forms a roux that gives the base its smooth body and richness.
Milk
Boiling milk, added to the roux and cooked, thickens into the creamy base of the soufflé.
Sugar
Sugar adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the custard base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when whisked and folded gently; overmixing deflates them, and the soufflé will rise less and turn dense when baked.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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