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Dessert

Date Souffle

A baked dessert of dates or prunes folded into stiff egg whites, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dates

  1. If using prunes, soak them in cold water for 30 minutes, then stone and chop them into small pieces.

  2. Sprinkle 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar over the chopped dates or prunes.

Make the soufflé

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and sweeten with pulverized sugar.

  2. Gently mix the egg whites with the date mixture.

  3. Pour into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°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
Provide the main sweetness and moist, rich body to the soufflé.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the soufflé its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the dates and the whites and helps the whites hold their peaks.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Mixing gently keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring hard deflates the foam, so the soufflé bakes flat and dense.

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.

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