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Dessert

Lemon Souffle

A light lemon pudding made with butter, starch, sugar, milk, eggs, and served with a lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Lemon Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the potato starch or Vienna flour and caster sugar.

  3. Gradually add the milk and grated lemon peel, stirring until thickened.

  4. Beat the egg yolks for 30 seconds and mix into the pudding.

Fold and steam

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pint mold, securing a band of buttered paper around the top.

  3. Place the mold in a pot of boiling water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the mold.

  4. Simmer gently for about 20 minutes, or until firm enough to turn out.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, boil the sugar in cold water for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the strained lemon juice and mix in the potato starch dissolved in sherry or water, thickening over heat.

  3. Pour the sauce over the pudding and serve.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they trap air to give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help set the custard as it cooks, adding richness and body.
Potato starch or vienna flour
Thickens the milk base into a stable custard that can hold the whipped egg whites.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour in the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring or deflating the mixture makes the soufflé dense and less risen.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, lemon, egg, sauce, sherry. 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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