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Dessert

Corn Souffle

A baked cornmeal custard made with milk, eggs, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Corn Souffle

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 base

  1. In a pot, stir cornmeal and salt into hot milk and cook for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and add butter; let cool.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Add the yolks to the corn mixture, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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

Eggs
Whites trapped into the batter provide the airy lift that makes the soufflé rise and hold its shape.
Cornmeal
Cooked in hot milk, it thickens the base and gives the soufflé its body and corn flavor.
Milk
Hot milk cooks the cornmeal into a thick base and adds moisture to the finished soufflé.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soufflé a tender texture and rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to stiff peaks. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; stirring or deflating it leaves the soufflé dense and flat after baking.

“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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