Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Souffliee

A light, airy lemon custard steamed in a buttered mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Lemon Souffliee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the flour and milk until smooth.

  2. Add the sugar and butter, then heat in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir constantly until it boils and thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks and grated lemon peel.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gently fold into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a well-buttered mold and steam for 30 to 45 minutes.

  3. Serve with boiled custard flavored with 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. Butter + milktop 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 to stiff peaks trap air, lifting the mixture as it steams.
Flour
Thickens the milk base so it holds the folded foam without collapsing.
Butter
Adds richness and softness to the base and enriches the texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and adds body to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten until stiff hold the air that makes a soufflé rise. Folding gently preserves that air; stirring or deflating it leaves a dense, flat result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes