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Dessert

Custard Souffle'

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Custard 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 custard base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Beat together the flour and butter in a bowl.

  3. Gradually add the boiling milk to the flour and butter mixture, cooking for 8 minutes while stirring often.

  4. Beat the sugar and egg yolks together in another bowl.

  5. Combine the cooked mixture with the egg yolk mixture.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Fold the stiff egg whites into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

  4. Bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with creamy sauce.

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 + 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).

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 whipped to stiff peaks provide the airy structure that lifts the soufflé, while yolks enrich and set the custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stable white sauce that holds the soufflé base together.
Butter
Enriches the base with fat, adding richness and a tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which is thickened by the cooked flour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the custard base.

The step that matters

Fold the stiff egg whites into the mixture. Folding gently preserves the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the soufflé rise poorly and turn 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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