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Dessert

Orange Souffle

A custard-based dessert flavored with orange juice and rind, topped with a frothy egg‑white frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange 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.

Make the custard

  1. Heat 1 quart of milk and whisk in 6 egg yolks to make a rich boiled custard.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

  3. Once cool, add the juice of 4‑5 oranges, sugar, and the grated rind of 2 oranges.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare the frosting using the reserved 6 egg whites.

  2. Cover the custard with frosting and place it in a pan of cold water.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden brown.

  4. Serve cold.

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 + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 yolks
Thicken the milk into a rich custard and add richness.
Egg whites
Form the frosting that covers the custard and browns in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and orange flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooling the custard before adding the orange. The record says to add the orange juice once the custard is cool. Adding acidic juice to hot egg custard can cause it to curdle or thin, so cooling first keeps it smooth.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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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