Name: Hot Puddings and Souffles
Ingredients: 3 egg yolks; 4 egg whites; butter for greasing; water for steaming

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Hot Puddings and Souffles

Ingredients

3 egg yolks
4 egg whites
butter for greasing
water for steaming

Directions

Make the mixture

Whip the egg whites to a stiff froth.
In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks gently with the whipped egg whites.

Mold and steam

Grease a souffle mold with butter.
Pour the mixture into the mold.
Steam the souffle for 20 minutes.

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.

Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites: Whipped into a foam that traps air, giving the souffle its lift and airy structure.
Egg yolks: Add richness and flavor, and set with the whites to give a tender body.