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Spinach Souffle

Spinach soufflé made with boiled spinach, white sauce, salt, paprika, and folded egg whites, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and sauce work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 756 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Spinach 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

  1. Chop the spinach finely and process it through a vegetable chopper.

Make the mixture

  1. Season the spinach with salt and paprika, then add the white sauce.

  2. Mix well and gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake in a large baking dish or individual ramekins at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Spinach + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Sauce and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

Spinach
Provides the bulk, color and earthy flavor of the soufflé.
White sauce
Binds the spinach and adds moisture and body to the mixture.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lift the mixture and set into a light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that makes the soufflé rise. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the soufflé bakes up flat and dense. Fold gently, keeping as much volume as possible.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, 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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