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Omelet Souffle

A light, airy omelet made by folding beaten egg whites into a white sauce and baking.

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 ↓

Omelet 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.

Make the white sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting the butter, adding flour, and gradually whisking in the milk until smooth.

Prepare the egg

  1. Separate the yolk and white of the egg; beat them until light.

Combine and bake

  1. Once the white sauce is cool, add the yolk and gently fold in the beaten egg white.

  2. Pour the mixture into a small buttered dish.

  3. Bake in a pan of hot water at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Egg
Whipped white gives the soufflé its airy lift, while the yolk enriches the custard base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that holds the structure together.
Butter
Fat that enriches the white sauce and adds flavour.
Milk
Liquid that, with flour and butter, forms the thickened white sauce base.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites; stirring or deflating them makes the omelette dense instead of light. The white sauce should also be cool, so it does not cook or deflate the whites.

“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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