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An Omelette Soufflé

A light, airy omelette soufflé flavored with lemon zest or orange-flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

An Omelette Soufflé

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.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs with lemon zest or orange-flower water until a batter forms.

  2. Whip the egg whites until frothy and gently fold them into the batter.

Cook the omelette

  1. Heat an omelet pan and melt the butter until it begins to boil.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan and stir gently until it starts to firm up.

Bake and finish

  1. Transfer to a small circular dish and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10-15 minutes until puffed.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  3. Use a salamander to brown.

  4. Serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 that lifts the batter, and the proteins set to give structure.
Butter
Fat that enriches the batter and helps the base brown in the hot pan.
Lemon zest or orange-flower water
Adds aromatic flavour that comes through the sweet, eggy batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Fold gently so the air bubbles in the whites are not knocked out. The trapped air expands in the oven and is what makes the soufflé puff, so overmixing leaves it flat and dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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