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Dessert

Custard Souffle

A baked custard soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, egg yolks, sugar, and beaten egg whites.

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 ↓

Custard 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 custard base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar, then mix into the sauce and let cool.

Fold and bake

  1. Half an hour before serving, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the cooled mixture.

  3. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately with a creamy sauce.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 into foam that traps air, lifting the souffle as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set as the proteins cook.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth base that holds the whipped whites.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor and helps form the thickened base with the flour.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavor of the eggs.

The step that matters

Gently fold the egg whites into the cooled mixture.. Whipped whites hold air that makes the souffle rise. Stirring or deflating them too hard releases that air, so the souffle bakes flat and dense. The base should be cool enough not to melt the foam.

“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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