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Dessert

Peach Souffle

A baked peach soufflé made with butter, flour, breadcrumbs, sugar, peaches, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Peach 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 base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the syrup from the can of peaches and enough water to make 1 pint of liquid.

  3. Stir in the bread crumbs and cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Add the sugar and 1 cup of chopped peaches.

  5. Remove from heat and stir in the well-beaten egg yolks.

Bake

  1. Carefully fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake for 40 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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 are folded in to trap air, which lifts and gives the soufflé its light, airy structure.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the peach syrup and liquid, thickening the base and giving it body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid mixture into a smooth base that holds the other ingredients.
Peaches
Provide fruit flavour and moisture to the soufflé base.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites carefully. Egg whites hold air only while they are intact. Folding gently keeps the trapped air in the mixture, so the soufflé rises in the oven instead of deflating.

Swap the peach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, flour, sugar, egg. 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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