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Potato Souffle

A baked potato filled with mashed potato, butter, milk, salt, spices, and egg, then baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Potato Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Scrub and bake the potatoes until well done.

  2. Cut them in halves lengthwise or remove a thick slice and scoop out the insides.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the potato insides and mix in the butter, hot milk, salt, and cayenne or paprika.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff or use a whole egg, then mix it with the potato mixture.

Fill and finish

  1. Spoon the mixture back into the potato skins, heaping it on top.

  2. Moisten the tops with a little of the egg.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the main body of the filling and hold the mixture inside the skins.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lightness and help the filling puff and set.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, softening the mashed potato for a smoother texture.
Hot milk
Moistens the mashed potato and keeps the filling smooth and easy to spoon.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites trap air when beaten to stiff peaks, which gives the soufflé its lift. If they are under-whipped or deflated when folded in, the filling will be dense and will not puff as well in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

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