Skip to main content
Dessert

Souffle Yanilla

A light vanilla‑flavored souffle baked in stages and served warm with sugar and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Souffle Yanilla

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with powdered sugar, salt, and vanilla extract.

  3. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  4. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter an earthen dish and pour in two-thirds of the mixture.

  2. Bake in the hot oven until it rises to a high pyramid, about a few minutes.

  3. Quickly open the oven door, break the top with a fork, and pour in the remaining mixture.

  4. Close the oven door quickly and bake until golden brown, checking with a straw for doneness.

  5. Serve warm with sugar and lemon.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whipped whites trap air, which makes the soufflé rise and gives it a light structure.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilise the yolk mixture for folding.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the yolk mixture. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Stirring or deflating them removes the air that lifts the soufflé, so it rises less and turns dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes