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Dessert

Lemon Souffle

A light, airy dessert made with lemon, butter, sugar, and egg whites, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Add the milk and grated lemon peel, stirring until thickened.

  4. Beat the egg yolks for 30 seconds, then gradually stir into the mixture.

Fold and steam

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pint mold, tying a band of buttered paper around it.

  3. Place the mold in a pot with 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

  1. For the sauce, boil the sugar in cold water for 10 minutes, then add the strained lemon juice.

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
Whipped air that lifts and gives the soufflé its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help set the custard for a rich, tender texture.
Potato starch or vienna flour
Thickens the milk base so it can hold the folded egg whites.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the base for a smooth, tender crumb.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Stirring hard knocks out the air trapped in the whipped whites, so the soufflé rises less and turns out dense.

Swap the potato

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

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

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