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Dessert

Arrowroot Souffle

A light, sweet soufflé made with arrowroot, milk, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk until smooth.

  2. Boil ½ pint of milk and pour it onto the arrowroot mixture.

  3. Return to the saucepan and boil for three minutes.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Add the sugar and stir in the egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

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

  3. Bake in a buttered dish for ten 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.

  1. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Arrowroot or cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth base that holds the soufflé's structure.
Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks give the soufflé its light, risen structure; yolks enrich the base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a custard-like mixture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Folding gently keeps that air in the mixture, so the soufflé rises in the oven instead of collapsing.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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