Skip to main content
Dessert

Date Souffle

A baked soufflé made from chopped dates or prunes folded into beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Date Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fruit

  1. Stone and chop the dates or prunes into small pieces.

  2. Sprinkle 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar over the chopped fruit.

Make the soufflé

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then sweeten with pulverized sugar.

  2. Combine the fruit mixture with the beaten egg whites.

  3. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with sweetened and flavored whipped cream.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Dates + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together985 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Dates + eggtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Dates or prunes
Provide the sweet, moist fruit base that flavors the soufflé.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to give the soufflé its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the baked soufflé.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites hold air only when fully whipped and free of fat or yolk. Underbeaten whites collapse, and overbeaten whites turn dry and grainy, so the soufflé loses its lift.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, 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.

You might also like

Stuffed DatesStuffed Dates32 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes