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Dessert

Souffle Custard

A custard soufflé made with flour, milk, eggs, butter, and sugar, baked until risen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Souffle Custard

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the custard

  1. Mix the flour, sugar, and salt with a bit of cold milk to form a paste.

  2. Quickly add this paste to 1 pint of scalding milk over heat, stirring rapidly until thick and smooth.

  3. Cover and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the butter, cut into bits, and the beaten egg yolks, and stir for a moment.

  5. Cover and set aside for 10 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the custard.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish set in a pan of water.

  4. Bake in a very hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

  5. Serve immediately when done, as it will fall quickly.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 whipped and folded in provide the airy structure that lifts the soufflé, while yolks enrich the custard.
Flour
Cooked into the milk, it thickens the custard base so it holds the whipped whites.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which sets as it cooks and bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smoother, softer texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whipped until stiff and folded in gently so the air bubbles are not knocked out. Those bubbles expand in the oven and give the soufflé its rise; overmixing deflates them and the dish comes out dense.

“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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