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Dessert

Orange Soufflee

A custard dessert with orange slices topped with meringue, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,696 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Orange Soufflee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. Make a soft custard by heating the milk, egg yolks, and sugar in a saucepan until thickened.

  2. Grate the rind of one orange and mix it into the custard.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the sliced oranges in the bottom of a pudding dish and pour the hot custard over them.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the powdered sugar and mix well.

  3. Spread the meringue over the custard and oranges, then bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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 + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they form the light, airy meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it body and softness.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whites, sweetening and steadying the meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Under-beaten whites collapse and deflate the meringue, while over-beaten whites turn grainy and dry. Adding sugar gradually helps the foam hold its shape and bake light.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar. 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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