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Dessert

Souffle Pudding

A sweet, airy pudding made by folding beaten egg whites into a batter of sugar, flour, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Souffle Pudding

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine sugar, flour, butter, egg yolks, and orange juice in a bowl; beat until smooth.

  2. Beat egg whites in a separate bowl until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased mold or baking dish, filling no more than halfway.

  2. Boil the mold in water or bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and make the pudding rise and turn light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the pudding into a tender structure as it cooks.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter holds its shape once baked.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and adds body to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Whipped whites hold air that gives the soufflé its lift. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so fold gently with a spatula until no white streaks remain.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, 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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